Amalia Tankers Inc.: TradeWinds' top ten deals

Tuesday, February 20, 2007

TradeWinds' top ten deals

I rate the deals as follows:J - Camillo Eitzen & Co’s EUR 219m ($280m) purchase of the 14 ship fleet of French chemical tanker operator, Fouquet Sacop. I like the Eitzen deal because I have a bias in this sector of the market. Eitzen is a knowledgeable and experienced operator. I know the acquired company to be a quality operation. I - Bergesen Worldwide Gas’ $347m purchase of the 10 vessel LPG carrier fleet of Norwegian fertiliser producer, Yara. C – DP World’s $5.75bn purchase of P&O for its ports portfolio. D - AP Moller – Maersk’s $2.8bn takeover of P&O Nedlloyd. E – Hapag-Lloyd’s $2.3bn acquisition of CP Ships. F - The $600m purchase by Saade family controlled CMA CGM of North South liner trade specialist Delmas. These above deals are similar in that strategic market positioning was a major factor in the acquisition. I do not know enough about the specific aspects of the deals to comment in detail. The Bergeson LPG deal looks a like a very fine piece of business. All the companies acquired are established operations of stategic value. Unfortunately we do not see Greeks going for this upper part of the market.H – The $542m deal by Peter Georgiopoulos’ General Maritime to sell 10 suezmax tankers and nine aframax OBOs to Tanker Pacific. G – The $550m sale and leaseback of 13 tankers by Evangelos Pistiolis led Top Tankers. These deals have to do with cashing in on the current high asset prices. Georgiopoulos made a good move to restructure his fleet and will hopefully focus more on quality before further scaling up. The Pistiolis ranks lower because it is really balance sheet restructuring and they are carrying the lease liabilities. It reflects the congestion in the KG market and competition for deals. B - Tsakos Energy Navigation $530m acquisition of nine ice class tankers from Swiss oil trader Western Petroleum. Tsakos is moving into a new area and it remains to be seen how they will perform. His father's management company faces new challenges in crewing, etc in these specialised trades. A – The recent $735m purchase by Stamatis Molaris led Quintana of 17 ships from that serial dealmaker Theodore Angelopoulos of Metrostar. Whilst the scaling up is understandable, the company is moving very far, very fast with analogous challenges. The CEO has no prior personal involvement in ship management or operations, being a financial man. The company faces substantial challenges in crewing and house technical management to find suitable sea and office staff and get them properly working together so that the ships perform well for Bunge. The deal makes the company a technical vessel provider to one major client, so the in-house commercial and operational base remains small.

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History of Amalia Tankers and its Founder.

Diran Majarian was born in Princeton, New Jersey. He comes from a professional family. He attended Princeton Country Day School, growing up in this small university town. His secondary studies and undergraduate work was mainly on the US West Coast. He attended the Cate School near Santa Barbara, California where he graduated ‘cum laude’. He earned his BA from Reed College in Portland, Oregon in philosophy and sociology with his college freshman year at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.

Mr. Majarian’s graduate studies were in law and business administration. He attended the Cornell Law School in Ithaca, New York where he earned a JD with specialization in international affairs. At Cornell, he served on the ‘Cornell International Law Journal’. Later after initial work experience, he studied business administration at the University of Nice-Sophia Antipolis in Nice, France where he concentrated on general management and corporate finance.

Mr. Majarian has attended numerous professional seminars in the UK, Switzerland, Greece and elsewhere concerning the shipping and banking industries. He maintains close contact with major schools like Wharton, Harvard and IMD for continuing professional education opportunities. IMD invited him to attend the Lausanne Shipping forum and participate in their shipping and risk management seminar. The Wharton School at Penn accepted him to participate in their Advanced Management Program.

After finishing law school and successfully passing NY and NJ bar examinations, Mr. Majarian was attracted to the shipping business because it was international in scope and open competitive markets. He wanted to play an active role in commercial and financial matters.

Mr. Majarian started his shipping career in the Thenamaris Group in chartering in Piraeus, Greece. Stelios Papadimitriou (later President of the Alexander S. Onassis Foundation) interviewed him and offered him a position in Olympic Maritime S.A. in Monte Carlo. Olympic gave him exposure to all aspects of ship management and groomed him for a management position in the business. He was initially assigned to insurance management with Alain Bernard , who later became a board member of the Gard Club. Among other duties, he was responsible for all the charter party arbitrations and commercial litigation for the group. Meanwhile he studied business administration at the University of Nice. When his colleague Dimitris Anagnostopoulos (currently Senior Vice President ABM-Amro Global Shipping) left Olympic, Mr. Majarian was promoted to assistant financial manager.

He returned to Piraeus with Bank of America, where he worked with Alex Tourkolias, now the Deputy General Manager and Senior Corporate Credit Officer of National Bank of Greece, Nick Karellis, who is head of shipping in the Greek market for HSBC Bank and John Platsidakis , who is General Manager of the Angelicoussis Group. While at BofA, he handled major shipping accounts notably Aristides Alafouzos (Glafki), Loucas Hadjioannou (Troodos), George Livanos (Ceres), and Hadjuelefteriades (Eletson).

He left Bank of America to start-up and develop several shipping businesses. The first business was Adriatic Tankers, where he established the business plan, arranged the initial financing, and assisted in setting up the operations. Whilst the company grew to ten vessels in a very short time, a divergence of views amongst the partners led to the end of this relationship. At this juncture, Mr. Majarian became active in the European Chemical Tanker Organization and the parcel chemical business. He then worked with Arsay Shipping in Turkey and assisted in the development of a fleet of stainless chemical tankers, some on time-charters, some on COA’s with SABIC/ Iranian government. Recently, major Israeli-controlled interests acquired this business and they have created a common chemical tanker pool with Gadot Chemical Tankers: Chem-Tankers. This led to co-operation with Gadot Chemical Tankers - Israel. Gadot is an integrated company with production, distribution, transportation and storage of chemicals, including a Greek distribution subsidiary Chyma S.A., which is a major force in the local Greek solvents market.

Mr. Majarian built a ship operating company with their last owned vessel at the time on the basis of leveraged buy-out with their continuing participation. This involved building an organization with high quality technical engineering and ship management capabilities. He trained and developed a new crew of high standards, creating a labor pool of over fifty well-qualified seamen on an in-house basis. He upgraded the vessel, which had a lot of technical challenges both with the complex machinery and structurally with the double hull and stainless steel cargo tanks. This entailed some major repair projects. He acquired approvals carried cargoes for major chemical companies like Dow and ICI as well as oil companies like Exxon, Mobil, Shell, BP and Total. He initiated one of the first ISM systems in Piraeus to ensure quality standards.

This business involved the regional parcel chemical trade between the Northern Europe and the Mediterranean with two to six intermediate ports. Base cargoes northwards were inorganic heavy chemicals like white phosphoric acid, and calcium bromide and aromatic petrochemicals like benzene, xylene. Base cargoes southwards were a wide variety of petrochemicals like acrylonitrile, ethylene dichoride, ethylene dibromide, etc. - usually 10 or more parcels. This is a major regional route with competitors like the Stolt Inter-European Service, United Seatrans Chempool and Vopack. During these years, Mr. Majarian developed a lot of respect in the chemical parcel industry as a serious and diligent operator with an excellent safety and operating record.

His reputation as a corporate ‘developer’ and ‘trouble-shooter’ grew during this period to the extent that the well-known Swiss executive search firm Egon Zehnder International approached him on an assignment with the Greek Government for CEO in the privatization plans for Olympic Airlines, which was short-lived with the fall of the government government and opposition to privatization.

In the last few years, Mr. Majarian has had a keen interest to start a new operation in parcel chemicals. He established Amalia Tankers Inc. as a company to develop joint ventures particularly in the chemical parcel tanker business. He maintains good relations with major operators.

Lately he has been heavily involved with the US investment banking community and major private equity investors. In 2005, he did a private equity road show in New York, working with Hamish Norton then at Bear Stearns on a project involving a package of chemical tankers operating in a major chemical tanker pool. Recently he gave a seminar in London to a select group of institutional investors on the impact of the global financial crisis on the shipping industry.

He believes strongly in certain business principles:

1. Focusing on opportunities in promising markets with first-class business partners and clear business guidelines.

2. Building a strong organization with teamwork and professionalism.

3. Proper financial structuring and good capitalization.

4. Corporate organization with transparency and accountability.

5. Meticulous technical vessel management with qualified seafarers and shore staff with emphasis on safety and quality execution with charterers.

6. Creating value in the business by making strategic acquisitions, expanding the commercial network and offering quality transport services.

Amalia Tankers Inc.

Tuesday, February 20, 2007

TradeWinds' top ten deals

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Blog Archive

About Me

History of Amalia Tankers and its Founder.

Vessels under management

Amalia Tankers Inc.

Tuesday, February 20, 2007

TradeWinds' top ten deals

No comments:

Post a Comment

Blog Archive

About Me

History of Amalia Tankers and its Founder.

Vessels under management

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