80 Jobs Lost as Olympic Avoids Bankruptcy

Norwegian provider of subsea and offshore construction vessels, Olympic, said on Friday it has obtained support from its key stakeholders for the financial restructuring of the Group. 

Through implementation of the restructuring, a new pure-play subsea structure will be created and NOK 400 million injected in new equity.

A new company, “Olympic Subsea” (OLSUB, currently named Olympic Offshore AS) will be capitalized with new equity to be provided by existing owners of Olympic and new investors. OLSUB will acquire from Olympic and its subsidiaries all of the subsidiaries owning 11 subsea vessels.

Olympic will retain ownership in 1 MPSV, 4 PSVs and 3 AHTSs (the “OLSH Group”). Through conversion of inter-company debt, OLSH will become a subsidiary of OLSUB.

Four vessels are being sold and/or transferred in connection with the process; the “Olympic Athene“, “Olympic Hera“, “Olympic Commander” and “Olympic Poseidon“. The already completed sale of Olympic Athene will have a positive liquidity effect on group level of NOK 70 million after repayment of debt, while the other vessels are expected to have a neutral liquidity effect.

However, this means that Olympic will no longer be able to offer employment to the crew on the above mentioned vessels. All in all Olympic said it expects that 80 employees will be redundant, while others could be temporary redundant.

“I regret that we are forced to discharge so many good employees, and we would really have wanted to avoid this situation. At the same time, we must accept that this solution enables us to keep the majority of our staff. This has been an important goal for us during the process, although we feel sorry for those colleagues who will not be part of the future Olympic,” says Olympic’s CEO Stig Remøy.

OLSUB will raise total equity of NOK 400 million, of which NOK 290 million is paid in cash and NOK 110 million is represented by the value of contributed management companies. Current indirect majority shareholder in OLSH will contribute with NOK 280 million. OLSUB will allocate funds to the OLSH Group to cover a potential warm stacking scenario until 2020, but will not have other financial obligations or guarantees towards the OLSH Group.

For a more detailed view of the restructuring, please refer to the company’s Oslo Stock Exchange notice.