More Aegean woes

Latest from Lloyd's List:

Aegean Marine Petroleum Network has laid out its findings to date from a lengthy internal investigation by its audit committee and it does not make pretty reading for shareholders of the New York-listed company, with up to $300m of company cash and other assets now held to have been “misappropriated” through fraud. 

I met some Glencore management, who run their fuel oil business from the Chemoil merger, just last week at a conference in Athens. They alerted me to the fact that despite so many months since the Mercuria take over, the company was still a mess and there were no published accounts.

We will see whether the US authorities will intervene on the fraud charges related to the receivables. Usually this goes nowhere and the shareholders simply lose their money.

I never liked this set up from the initial IPO. This is reflected in my previous blog articles. The company was very badly run in a difficult and low margin business with a lot of debt against receivables. That was an unsustainable and high risk business Strategy.

Since the initial IPO, I have consistently advised countless institutional investors to stay away from ANW.

Mercuria have the financial and operational means to turn this around but it will need a lot of restructuring. IMO 2020 is going to be a revolution to the fuel supply industry and likely to change the credit terms with the substantial increase in fuel costs.