BUCHAREST (Romania), March 23 (SeeNews) – Romania has reached an agreement with Dutch group Damen Shipyards to become the majority shareholder in Daewoo Mangalia Heavy Industries (DMHI) shipyard by acquiring a 2% stake in the shipyard held by the Dutch group, the country's economy ministry said.
In November, Damen entered into an agreement with Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering (DSME) to buy its 51% share in DMHI for an undisclosed sum.
You can subscribe to our M&A newsletter here
However, the new agreement between Romania and Damen stipulates that state-owned 2 Mai S.A Mangalia will renounce its preference rights on the shares held by DSME in DMHI, while Damen will transfer a 2% stake to 2 Mai S.A, the economy ministry said in a press release on Thursday.
"For the first time in the last 28 years the Romanian state takes control of a privatised strategic industrial objective. As a majority shareholder we can effectively protect the interests of the Romanian state and we can also protect the highly qualified labour force at the shipyard," economy minister Danut Andrusca said in the statement.
DMHI was established in 1997 as a joint venture between South Korea's Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering and Romania's 2 Mai Mangalia Shipyard with Daewoo as majority shareholder, with 50.99%. The other shareholders of the joint venture were 2 Mai Mangalia Shipyard, with 48.99%, and three Korean investors.
The DMHI shipyard, spreading over an area of 980,000 sq m on the Black Sea coast, has three dry docks with a total length of 982 metres and 1.6 kilometres of berthing space.
Damen already owns a shipyard in Romania, in Galati, a port city on the Danube river, which is currently the group’s largest shipyard. Since joining Damen in 1999, the Galati shipyard has developed into an efficient production facility with a significant output of many hundreds of vessels and structures.
Damen Shipyards Group operates 33 shipbuilding and repair yards, employing 9,000 people worldwide. Damen has delivered more than 6,000 vessels in more than 100 countries and delivers some 180 vessels annually to customers worldwide.