Economou takes aim at OceanPal board
Source: Splash247
Greek shipowner George Economou continues to pick a fight with the Palios family with the latest plan to oust most directors at dry bulk player OceanPal.
Economou is seeking departures from five of seven current directors at the Nasdaq-listed owner of three panamaxes and a pair of capes while proposing two of his candidates for election at the company’s next annual meeting of stockholders.
According to a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, Economou has accumulated a 10.1% stake in Diana Shipping spinoff via his investment vehicle Sphinx.
The owner of over 100 ships in the dry bulk, tanker and LNG segments is aiming at OceanPal’s board director and chair, Semiramis Paliou, daughter of shipping veteran Simeon Palios, as well as Styliani Alexandra Sougioultzoglou, Alexios Chrysochoidis, Eleftherios Papatrifon and Grigorios-Filippos Psaltis, proposing to stockholders to request their resignation.
Nikolaos Veraros and Ioannis Zafirakis, the other two directors, have not been named as part of Economou’s scheme, but he is eyeing board seats for former chairman of OceanFreight and ex-board member of Ocean Rig John Liveris and Georgios Kokkodis, who also served on Ocean Rig’s board and former Economou public company, DryShips.
Economou made his first move on Palios family-linked shipowners in August last year when he bought into the aframax specialist Performance Shipping. The war of words that escalated afterward led to Economou first being after a board seat at Performance with Liveris again as a candidate, then seeking resignations from four existing directors, including chief executive Andreas Michalopoulos, to ultimately launching a cash tender offer in a bid to gain control of the US-listed tanker owner.
A position in OceanPal was revealed at the end of September 2023 when Economou paid $563,000 for 9.1% of the company, but his intentions were unclear until last Friday’s SEC filing. Overall, he has paid about $740,000 for his stake in OceanPal, whose fleet, with an average age of 19 years, is estimated to be worth around $60m.
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