OW Bunker Subsidiaries Look to Carry On, Distance Themselves From Bankruptcy

by Ship & Bunker News Team
Wednesday December 3, 2014

OW Bunker subsidiaries, including Rotterdam-based OW Bunker (Netherlands) B.V., are seeking to continue in business and distance themselves from ongoing bankruptcy proceedings in Denmark and elsewhere, Danish media reports.

"We got a lot of aggressive approaches from the bankruptcy estate, and after a few days, we decided that we had better think of ourselves first," said Vincent de Vos, MD of OW Bunker Netherlands.

De Vos hopes to continue to trade, collecting debts owed to OW Bunker Netherland and paying its own bills, but in order for this to happen cash needs to bypass receivers and administrators involved in the bankruptcy.

"We have a healthy business, where we indeed owe money but also have customers who owe us money," he said.

"Right now [customers] dare not pay anything because they know it will disappear into a black hole in the estate in Aalborg."

The move by OW Bunker Netherlands is said to be one among a host of other OW Bunker subsidiaries considering similar actions, such as those in Norway, the U.S., Spain, Germany, and Greece.

According to the report, it is feared that such moves could leave creditors without access to assets that would otherwise go to paying the bankrupt parent's debts.

But Henrik Steen Jensen, a lawyer with experience of the bankruptcy of large Danish construction company Pihl, said subsidiaries seeking to isolate themselves from their parent was "standard practice" in this situation.

Swiss trading house Mercuria is reportedly looking to hire almost 40 ex-OW Bunker staff to boost its bunker trading business in Asia.