Financial woes for SBM lead to talk of sell-off

Change: SBM chief executive Tony Mace will step down at the end of this year

SBM Offshore is considering whether to sell all or part of its GustoMSC division, Upstream has been told, after being forced to take a $450 million financial hit this year on projects in which the Dutch engineering division was involved.

News about the potential offload emerged at the same time as the market was rife with rumours that SBM itself had become an acquisition target.

A well-placed source said the GustoMSC subsidiary, a leading rig and vessel design company formed in 2003, is not a happy one. “They have lost a lot of people, including senior engineers, and there is unrest.”

Another source said SBM is “trying to sell the MSC part of GustoMSC”, which was recently reorganised, a move seen by some sources as a prelude to its partial or outright sale.…

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