Finnlines Rolls into Grimaldi Group

More and more shipowners have been coming to the realization that there is a large gray area – and potentially access to a lot of capital – between “owning” a ship and “controlling” a ship. Teekay recently demonstrated with its acquisition of a majority stake in Petrojarl that the same can be true of a shipping company: for roughly half the investment you can sometimes control a company and receive all the commensurate benefits – as long as you’re willing to share a degree of control and a significant portion of the profits.

However we rarely see such transactions with public companies in venues like New York, as shareholder votes in response to tender offers result in an all or nothing outcome, with all shareholders seeing their shares either bought for cash or replaced with ownership in a new company, or typically a combination of the two. The result is very clear-cut however: the target company is privatized, it continues to operate in its present form, or it is entirely subsumed into another company. To do otherwise would be anathema to players in the New York market.

Outside the US, however, the game is often quite different. The regulations surrounding a variety of stock markets, such as those in Norway and Finland, require a bid for a public company once a certain percent ownership threshold is crossed but then allow each shareholder, rather than voting, to make a personal choice of whether to accept the offer or retain their shares and accept the influence or control of the new party making the tender offer.

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