Giant US private equity player Oaktree Capital Management has cashed in more of its holding in lucrative shipowner Hafnia.
The Singapore product tanker owner said the shareholder engaged investment banks Fearnley Securities, Jefferies and Pareto Securities to handle a block sale of 25.2m shares in a private placement.
This is equal to 5.1% of the company and worth $128m at the offer price of NOK 50 ($5.08) each.
The tender opened on Tuesday and closed on Wednesday.
Hafnia was trading down 3.72% at NOK 51.80 in Oslo on Wednesday morning.
Oaktree has 50m shares, about 9.98% of Hafnia. It was awarded a 20.4% slice when the BW Group-owned tanker company bought the 32-ship fleet of Oaktree’s Chemical Tankers Inc (CTI) in November 2021.
The shares were worth about NOK 17 at the time of the CTI deal, meaning a profit of NOK 831.6bn or $84.5m for Oaktree in the latest disposal.
The fund is represented on the Hafnia board by Guillaume Bayol, a managing director in Oaktree's GFI Energy Group.
He will now step down, as Oaktree’s holding will fall below 5% at 4.97%.
Oaktree’s stake had been reduced to 18.74% by last September, and it then completed a placement of 44.1m shares or 8.76% at NOK 42 per share, or NOK 1.85bn.
This generated a profit of around NOK 1.1bn for Oaktree.
The buyer or buyers have not been revealed.
Chemical carriers moved on
The fund had 95% of CTI after buying out Navig8 Group.
Hafnia wasted no time in offloading six stainless steel chemical carriers acquired as part of its CTI deal.
Within five months it signed an agreement with Dutch owner Ace Tankers Management at a net price of $252.4m.
The sales released $50m of cash to Hafnia. The gross price was about $260m.
TradeWinds has reported Ace Tankers is related to Idan Ofer’s Eastern Pacific Shipping.
