Business

Mon May 19 20:04:26 PDT 2008

(Adds details, shares)

OSLO, May 19 (Reuters) – Norwegian investment group Havyard Invest is selling its 10 percent stake in Europe’s biggest ship maker Aker Yards because it has insufficient influence over the group’s strategy, the managers of the sale said.

Pareto Securities and DnB NOR Markets, the managers for the sale of Havyard’s 11.45 million Aker Yards shares, said the investor was willing to sell its stake at 62.5 crowns, a 10 percent discount to Monday’s closing price.

Norwegian media and analysts have said Havyard and its owner Per Saevik were pushing to break Aker Yards into a cruise-ship arm and a specialised offshore vessels division, a strategy frowned upon by the group and its 39 percent owner, South Korea’s STX Shipbuilding.

Aker Yards has been hit by soaring costs and low efficiency at some of its European yards, which face increasing competition from lower-cost Asian ship builders.

The sale managers said in a statement that Havyard Invest AS and other entities controlled by Saevik asked it to sell the shares "due to unsatisfactory support for (their) strategy for Aker Yards going forward".

"The price will be set through a book-building process, whereof a minimum selling price has been set to 62.50 crowns, representing a discount of approximately 10 percent from the closing price of the Aker Yards shares … today," they said.

Shares in Aker Yards closed down 2.1 percent at 69 crowns before the Havyard statement. Oslo’s benchmark bourse index rose 1.3 percent on Monday.

(Reporting by Wojciech Moskwa, editing by Will Waterman)

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