Latvian Shipping Delists from Baltic Stock Exchange

Riga-based Latvian Shipping Company has received an approval to delisted its shares from the Baltic Main List.

Nasdaq Riga gave the company a green light to delist 200 million bearer shares from the Baltic stock exchange on February 13, 2018.

In an effort to privatize the tanker shipping company, the firm’s majority stakeholder, Vitol Netherlands, in December 2017 proposed to delist and sell LSC’s 200 million bearer shares.

Vitol acquired 19.62 percent of the total voting capital, equivalent to a total of 39,249,118 shares,  in LSC in June 2017, bringing its total shareholding to 69.56 percent.

In late January 2018, Vitol launched a final share buy-out. At the time, the company’s ownership in LSC was at 97.06%, or 182,367,467 dematerialized bearer shares and 399,999,830 registered shares.

Latvian Shipping Company earlier issued a short term loan in the amount of EUR 284 million to Vitol.

The interest rate is 0.5% per annum including an option to terminate the loan before the maturity date of September 30, 2018, in order to partly cover the company’s group financial obligations.

Latvian Shipping Company operates a fleet of sixteen Handy and MR ships with carrying capacities ranging from 37,211 to 52,684 tons.