OW Bunker (A): Denmark’s biggest IPO ever

OW Bunker, founded in 1953, was a Danish marine fuel (“bunker”) company. It was Denmark’s third largest company (measured on revenue) and the world’s largest bunker supplier until its collapse on 7 November 2014. Similar to many other commodity traders, OW Bunker’s business model was about buying the physical oil in order to sell at a later stage (“physical distribution”) OR to simply act as a broker between the physical supplier and the ship-owner (“re-selling”). In essence, the business can be characterized as a high volume/high revenue/small margin business, wherefore scale and risk management are key parameters for success. In 2007, 93.5% of the company were acquired by leading Scandinavian private equity company, Altor, and in the following years, the company grew significantly, and sales volume grew nearly 100%, from 15 million ton in 2007 to 29.6 million ton in 2013, at which time an exit was decided upon. When a private sales transaction did not succeed, Altor decided to pursuit an exit through an IPO, which with a Market Cap of about US$ 900 million, became the largest IPO in Denmark in many years.