STX France, which is 66.64% owned by South Korea’s bankrupt STX Offshore & Shipbuilding, may see the French government step in to take a majority shareholding, news site Libération reports.
The news goes against recent reports that a South Korean bankruptcy court planned to sell STX O&S and STX France as a package, which is still a possibility, with the French government seeing Chinese investors taking entities in a package deal to the the biggest threat to its plan.
Any sale of STX France will require approval from the French government which owns a 33.34% stake already. The Saint-Nazaire facility employs around 2,600 workers and is largely reliant on French technology.
STX O&S filed for court protection in May. Investment banks submitted their final due diligence report to the bankruptcy court in August, which concluded that STX’s going-concern value would be KRW 1.26tr ($1.2bn).
