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Case Study

OW Bunker (B): From top to flop in eight months

By Anand Narasimhan, Jens Famgronning, Tino Bendix and Yvonne Wutzler

1 pages

October 2019

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Reference: IMD-7-2127

Despite 1) being listed as a new darling on the stock exchange 2) an appreciation of the share price of 20% soon after the listing exceeding US$ 1 billion in market cap 3) a high profile Board of Directors 4) creditable sponsors of the IPO (such as Morgan Stanley), it became a mystery and dramatic meltdown, when the company filed for bankruptcy less than 8 months after the listing. As can repeatedly be seen from the IPO prospectus, it was supposedly a low margin but also low risk operation, because of the apparent diligent risk control of the company. So, what went wrong? The case will describe the dynamics which took place pre- and post the IPO and led to the bankruptcy. It will cover aspects such as Corporate Governance of the Board, ethics surrounding IPO’s and prospectus, risk management or a lack of it, Board composition and best practices and not least the HALO effects of a successful CEO and a highly reputable and respected new Board of Directors.

Learning Objective

The target of the B case is to learn from it in order for us to detect and deal with warning signals about poor governance earlier.

Keywords

Corporate Governance, Board, Risk Management, Initial Public Offering, Prospectus, Bankruptcy, Collapse, Fraud

Settings

Denmark
OW Bunker, Materials, Oil and Gas
March 28th, 2014 – November 7th, 2014

Type

Published Sources

Available Languages

English

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This case study is part of a series

OW Bunker (A): Denmark’s biggest IPO ever
OW Bunker (B): From top to flop in eight months

This case study is part of a series

OW Bunker (A): Denmark’s biggest IPO ever
OW Bunker (B): From top to flop in eight months

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