Shipping Veteran George Economou has reach[ds_preview]ed an agreement for his company DryShips Inc. with one of its lenders to settle its outstanding loan obligations.
The New York-listed shipowner said in a statement, that the lending bank – which was not named – has agreed to a write-off of approximately 50% of the »outstanding principal and interest due«. The owner of dry bulk carriers and offshore support vessels has repaid approximately $8.2 million of principal and will have to pay an additional amount of $2.0 million over the next nine months against a full and final settlement of all of its
obligations under the credit documents.
The agreement comes a couple of days after DryShips reported a net loss of $5.2 million for the third quarter. The company currently owns a fleet of 14 Panamax drybulk carriers with a combined deadweight tonnage of 1.0 million tons, and 6 offshore supply vessels, comprising 2 platform supply and 4 oil spill recovery vessels. Beforehand it had published a step of fleet restructuring: at the end of October, DryShips sold five of its Panamax vessels for an aggregate gross price of $29.4 million.
Part of that was the sale of »Amalfi« and »Samatan« along with their associated bank debt to entities controlled by the Company’s Chairman and CEO, George Economou. As part of the transaction, DryShips entered into an agreement to increase its secured revolving facility provided by an entity controlled by Mr. George Economou. This »Revolver« was amended to increase the maximum available amount by $5.0 million to $75.0 million and to give DryShips an option to convert $7.5 million of the outstanding balance to shares of DryShips’ common stock within 365 days.
In addition, the shipowner sold its three Panamax vessels »Ocean Crystal«, »Sonoma« and »Sorrento« to »un-affiliated buyers«. »All of the gross proceeds from the sales will be used to pay down their respective loan facilities«, DryShips announced.
