Cleary Gottlieb acted as U.S. counsel to STX Pan Ocean Co., Ltd. in its initial public offering of 600 million shares of common stock to public, institutional and other private investors in Singapore. The S$540 million offering closed on July 14, marking the first listing by a Korean company on the Singapore Stock Exchange.
Cleary also represented STX Shipbuilding Co., Ltd., POS Ship Management Co. and STX Engine Co., Ltd. as selling shareholders in the offering. As part of the transaction, STX Engine granted global coordinator Goldman Sachs (Singapore) Pte. an over-allotment option to purchase up to 90 million shares of STX Pan Ocean common stock. Goldman Sachs (Singapore) exercised its option on August 5, and the closing took place on August 11.
DBS Bank Ltd, ABN AMRO Bank N.V., Singapore Branch, N M Rothschild & Sons (Singapore) Limited, and Macquarie Securities (Singapore) Pte Limited acted as the co-lead managers.
STX Pan Ocean, an affiliate of Korean energy and trading company STX Corporation, is one of the premier shipping companies in Korea and worldwide. STX Pan Ocean generated sales of approximately $2.3 billion in 2004, transporting over 55 million tons of cargo on over 3,200 voyages between ports in over 70 countries. It leads the Korean market in the dry bulk sector in terms of dead weight tonnage and was recently ranked in the top ten globally in terms of dead weight tonnage capacity of its owned dry bulk fleet. STX Pan Ocean transports major bulk cargo, such as iron ore, coal, grain, steel products, sugar, cement, logs and palm and vegetable oils worldwide.