Singapore: Singapore-headquartered Parakou Tankers and NASDAQ-listed Cambridge Capital Acquisition Corporation are to merge, which will take the shipping company public.
Cambridge will be merged into a new holding company, Cambridge Holdco Inc, which has been incorporated in the Marshall Islands. Parakou will then be merged with Holdco’s subsidiary, Cambridge Merger Sub Inc. Parakou will survive the merger, becoming a wholly owned subsidiary of Holdco.
Once these mergers are complete, Holdco is expected to become the public company and will change its name to Parakou Tankers Inc.
The newly merged company intends to acquire additional MR product tankers for refined petroleum products, vegetable oils, palm oils, easy chemicals and biofuels globally, a statement said.
Parakou’s fleet currently consists of eight 51,000-DWT MR product tankers, which were transferred in July from Parakou (International) Limited, which is based in Hong Kong.
Parakou has letters of intent or is in negotiations to acquire an additional 20 MR product tankers before the end of 2017.
“We believe that joining forces with Cambridge will enable Parakou to realise both its near-term and longer-term growth objectives as a Nasdaq-listed company in the US,” Por Liu, CEO of Parakou, said in a statement.
“This is especially important in our industry, owning and operating a modern fleet of MR product tankers, which we believe has compelling long-term fundamentals. In addition, this merger affords us the ability to accelerate our growth at an opportune time as our industry is at an inflection point as evidenced by recent increasing rates.”
Parakou’s fleet is employed under time-charter contracts of between three and five years and an average remaining charter, of 1.5 years. [2/12/14]
