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This afternoon sees the long-awaited special shareholders' meeting of , the Antwerp oil tanker shipping company where a power struggle has been going on for months. The shareholders will be presented with three different visions.

It will be particularly interesting to see which candidates get elected to the board of directors, which will have to set the tanker shipping company's new strategic course.

John Fredriksen

  • The most notable director candidate is undoubtedly John Fredriksen, the Norwegian-born billionaire and one of the heavyweights in the shipping business. He is also nominating one of his confidants as a director.
  • The 78-year-old tycoon initially wanted to merge Euronav with his tanker company Frontline. That merged company would then immediately be in the oil tanker sector. But Fredriksen blew off those merger plans.
  • Those who expected him to let go of the Antwerp shipping company altogether were disappointed. He continued to build his stake to about 25 percent of . But it is not clear what his long-term plan for Euronav is.

The Saverys family

  • The Saverys family, the founders of Euronav and also the initiators of the special general meeting, does not want to know about a merger with Frontline and considers Fredriksen's long-term focus on oil transport obsolete.
  • Their shipping company CMB also owns 25 percent of Euronav.
  • The Antwerp shipowner clan wants to replace Euronav's current five-member board of directors altogether and is proposing its own quintet, with Marc Saverys, Euronav's founder and father of CMB CEO Alexander, as the standard-bearer.
  • Initially, the family emphasized a possible merger of Euronav with CMB.Tech, CMB's green arm. But its recently launched sounds more nuanced. It involves a two-step plan: "continue Euronav as an independent tanker company in the shorter term and focus on diversification and decarbonization in the longer term."

The current top management of Euronav

  • Euronav CEO Hugo De Stoop may not be on the board of directors himself, but he is the face of a third line.
  • De Stoop and his management remain a supporter of the original merger plans with Frontline even tried to force Fredriksen to merge through arbitration proceedings. But those proceedings came to nothing.
  • The CEO is also on a collision course with the Saverys family, according to a to investors a month ago. He says the CMB plan for Euronav includes "flawed ideas" and calls on shareholders to prevent the Saverys clan from taking power "through the back door."
  • The Euronav summit proposes to the shareholders to keep the current board of directors and to supplement it with two representatives each from the Fredriksen camp and the Saverys camp. That, according to De Stoop and co, is "the reflection of the current shareholder structure." The consulting firms ISS and Glass Lewis are backing that proposal, the main purpose of which is to counter the Saverys family's tabula rasa plan. (kg)

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