Two York Capital controlled offshore players to merge

MARCH 19, 2018 — Back in January, Aberdeen, Scotland, based Bibby Offshore completed a financial restructuring that saw it being acquired by a group of its bondholders, led by York Capital Management.

On Friday, Fara Holdco Limited, owner of Bibby Offshore, announced a merger with Norwegian based Rever Offshore AS, whose majority owner and controlling shareholder is York Capital Management and whose subsidiaries include Cecon Contracting AS.

According to Fara the combination of Bibby and Cecon Contracting will create a larger and more robust offshore installation delivery business both in the North Sea and internationally, currently focused on the Atlantic and Mediterranean regions. It says that “supported by strong ownership, the Bibby-Rever platform is well positioned to deliver even greater service quality and efficiency for clients. The combined company will continue to evaluate growth opportunities in its core diving and subsea umbilicals, risers, and flowlines (“SURF”) markets.”

Executive Chairman of Fara, Riulf Rustad said “This transaction builds upon the excellent track records of both Bibby Offshore and Cecon Contracting and brings them neatly together into a strong and focused group. The complementary services and assets of each business produced a compelling industrial logic to join forces. The individual geographical strengths and subsea intervention skills of each business now allows the combined platform to offer a much wider range products and solutions to their customers.”

Howard Woodcock, Chief Executive of Bibby Offshore said “Combining Bibby Offshore’s traditional diving and North Sea strengths with the SURF, international and engineering talents of Cecon creates an operationally and financially strong business capable of delivering even greater value to clients. This merger is a very exciting opportunity for us and represents a genuine win-win situation from which we can continue to build and grow a highly competitive and high quality business.”

Jo Braadlie, Managing Director of Cecon Contracting said “We are welcoming this new development, and look forward to exploring and developing a synergy providing added value, while at the same time enabling both parties to support each other with the view to taking on more and larger work scopes in a broader market”

The transaction is agreed and expected to close soon.