![COLUMN | Courting disaster? Heavy hitters in offshore get their day in court (part two of two) [Offshore Accounts]](http://media.assettype.com/bairdmaritime%2F2026-05-06%2Fhd8b5ryn%2FUntitled.jpeg?w=480&auto=format%2Ccompress&fit=max)
In part one earlier this week, we looked at court proceedings in Oslo that have pitted two Norwegian billionaires into battle over the restructuring of Solstad Offshore in 2023, a case which is due to come to judgement very soon. We also saw Havila Shipping pitted against three banks who have claimed the shipowner reneged on a restructuring agreement and have tried to arrest one of its ships, even as the company appeals against the judgement in favour of its lenders.
Now we look at the more personal battles.
Established in 1880 and formerly known as Simpson Spence Young, in recent years the brokerage now known as SSY has emerged as a potent force in offshore shipbroking.
Starting from a zero base in offshore, the British-headquartered shipbroking partnership headed by Stanko Jekov has embarked on breakneck corporate expansion over the last three years. It has been hiring offshore brokers from many of its major rivals, including Clarkson and Fearnleys. SSY has gained fame (or notoriety, depending on your perspective) for offering huge signing bonuses to entice established brokers to join it, signing bonuses reported to be to the tune of hundreds of thousands of pounds for key hires in the UK and Norway. “How will they ever earn the sign-on bonuses back?” is a question often heard from competitors.
SSY has also bought competitors’ companies outright, too. It acquired F3 Offshore in Hamburg in 2023 and Greig Shipbrokers in Norway in January 2026, both for undisclosed sums.
However, it was the company’s first offshore acquisition in 2023 that has seen the most legal coverage and raised the embarrassing question as to what due diligence SSY did when it made its inaugural foray into offshore.
That was when SSY acquired Westshore in Kristiansand, Norway from Goran Rostad for a sum believed to be in the high single digit millions of US dollars. It is understood that much of this would have been paid out to Mr Rostad in an “earn out” over time, tied to the success of him and the small team SSY acquired at Westshore, which included another Rostad family member.
Founded in 1987, Westshore was focused on the North Sea spot market, but, crucially, Westshore was a panel broker to Norwegian state oil company Equinor for its anchor handling and platform supply vessel requirements, giving SSY an entry into what passes as the North Sea big league.
How to put this for the delicate Baird readership? Unfortunately, the relationship soured in late 2025 when a selfie Mr Rostad had taken on a plane with a topless OnlyFans “performer” emerged, with him covering her breasts with an SSY report. He claimed that she was simply his neighbour and that it has been leaked from a private WhatsApp group chat without his consent. UK and Australian readers of a certain age will recall the theme song of the soap opera Neighbours, which ends, “that’s when good neighbours become good friends.”
The brokerage claimed that Mr Rostad had behaved inappropriately, in a manner likely to damage its reputation, whilst he claimed wrongful dismissal and demanded his job back at a Norwegian employment tribunal. Being reinstated to his job would enable him to continue to receive the earn out payments from the deferred compensation for the Westshore purchase from SSY.
The case was very high profile in the Norwegian press and more widely, and we understand that SSY undertook a wide-ranging investigation into other behaviour by Mr Rostad after the case began. It seems that this review uncovered further serious allegations of behaviour by Mr Rostad towards women in the industry, and at industry events, which have been characterised as “sleazy”, “creepy” and “horrible” to me by sources close to the investigation.
The bravery of those who spoke up to highlight their painful experiences involving this rich and powerful man cannot be underestimated. As is being stressed in harassment cases at sea, providing support so that victims have the confidence to speak up when facing harassment, bullying or other challenges is critical.
Given what emerged after the employment tribunal claim and the initial selfie, few in SSY were surprised when the company announced on March 30 that, “Goran Rostad drop[ped] all legal proceedings against SSY and accept[ed] dismissal decision on grounds of gross misconduct.”
Mr Rostad agreed to pay SSY’s legal fees of over US$100,000, and to reimburse certain travel expenses to the tune of around US$10,000, which he had claimed back, but which were not in fact claimable under the company’s policies. Mr Rostad, “also admitted liability for a series of wrongdoings and has apologised unreservedly to SSY management and staff,” SSY said.
What was surprising was the news last week, that even with all the evidence that Mr Rostad was no hero and that additional bad things had happened beyond the incident with the topless model to led to his departure from SSY, he was poached into a new job.
Swiss-headquartered broker Lightship Chartering has hired him to spearhead its drive into offshore, along with two colleagues from SSY, one of whom is believed to be his daughter. He announced the move with a characteristically confident post on social media.
“There are no second acts in American lives,” American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald once wrote. Clearly, however, there are in Norway and in offshore. We wonder whether Lightship’s CEO will be asked the same question that Stanko Jekov has faced at SSY. What due diligence did you make when you involved your business with Mr Rostad?
The move comes at a time of leadership change in Lightship as, last month, the company promoted Sune Fladberg to Vice Chairman of the Executive Board and appointed Mark Roberts as the new CEO. So, who took the decision exactly?
Someone who seemed to have learned from his mistakes and changed his ways was the seventy-something British accountant John Omerod.
The pensioner and ship finance specialist had been added to the UK sanctions list, had his bank accounts frozen, and was banned as a company director in May 2025, after the Financial Times ran a devastating exposé in October 2024. This showed that Russian state-owned oil company Lukoil had used its shipping arm to finance Mr Ormerod to acquire 25 second-hand tankers between December 2022 and August 2023, at a total cost of more than US$700 million. It was outstanding research from Tom Wilson (our coverage here).
FT was at pains to state at that time, Mr Ormerod was not accused of breaking any laws when a Lukoil subsidiary provided the funds for the ships' purchase by paying millions in advance charter hire for the vessels before Mr Ormerod’s Marshall Islands shell companies had even bought them.
I mean, who hasn’t paid for a service in advance from a provider who doesn’t even own the equipment to provide the service? It probably happens all the time on Uber, I imagine (“I paid US$700 million and you don’t even have a car?”).
The FT piece embarrassingly revealed how UK shipbroker Braemar had been involved in some of the sales (due diligence questions, anyone?) and how law firm Watson Farley and Williams had acted as escrow agent for at least eleven of the tanker sale transactions.
Watson Farley and Williams told Mr Wilson that it had conducted “thorough due diligence.” Hmm... Mr Ormerod said he had undertaken due diligence too. But nobody spotted Lukoil and the Russian state in the background, it seemed, even though aged tankers were prime candidates for the "dark fleet."
It was very unfortunate that this slipped through the net, all concerned with any of the 25 transactions agreed.
In March this year came good news for Mr Ormerod. The UK Government revoked its sanctions against him two weeks after he issued a public statement on his lawyers’ website in February, which began, “I have always opposed Russia’s war against Ukraine.”
Presumably he forgot this opposition when he received hundreds of millions of dollars from Lukoil to buy tankers later used to transport 120 million barrels of sanctioned Russian oil which was likely sold to fund the Russian war effort against Ukraine.
He said the asset freeze from the sanctions listing had had a “devastating impact” on him and his family. He concluded, “I encourage others to learn from my experience and avoid any actions that may support the Russian energy sector or other sectors of strategic significance.”
I hope all readers will follow that advice and avoid collecting millions from Russian state oil companies to charter tankers through shell companies in the Pacific. Learn that lesson, kids.
So, everything looked great. He was off the list, he could access his bank accounts again, and live a normal life once more. Sweet.
Mr Ormerod put out a statement of gratitude, again on his lawyers’ website. He was very thankful, the whole thing had been a big misunderstanding, he commented, “I urge others to be watchful, it is easy to be caught up unwittingly in the sanctions regime, as I was.”
Isn’t it just?
“I am delighted that we have succeeded in ensuring Mr Ormerod and his wife can now enjoy the rest of their retirement,” his lawyer at Quillon even said.
Lovely, heart-warming stuff.
Then some bad news last month. The National Crime Agency charged Mr Ormerod with alleged money laundering and breach of sanctions regarding Russia. Who would have thought that such charges might be possible in the circumstances?
Tom Wilson, back on the case at FT, observed that this was, “a rare example of the UK prosecuting those accused of violating the rules on doing business with Moscow.”
We stress, of course, that Mr Ormerod should be presumed innocent until the case reaches a verdict, and we look forward to hearing his defence in court.
The Eton-educated accountant is due to appear before a Westminster magistrate in London on May 15. We will keep you posted.
Even though this is a two-parter, unfortunately, we don’t have space or time to cover Seadrill’s commission bust up in Angola, which was ruled upon by the High Court in London last year. It’s a beauty.
This relates to commissions that the publicly listed driller did not pay to a “marketing agency” and a man called John Kennedy, who says he set in place the deal to create a joint venture for Seadrill to manage two DP drillships in conjunction with Sonangol, the state oil company of Angola. Yes, that Sonangol, a company that often appears in these pages, usually due to certain, historical misfortunes associated with its past management.
The case revolved around a claim from Mr Kennedy and Visalia Marketing Corporation seeking damages from Seadrill for breach of contract and/or restitution for unjust enrichment amounting to approximately US$72 million based on a promise that Seadrill was alleged to have made to pay Visalia four per cent of the revenue of the Sonadrill joint venture if the deal went through.
The full 400-page judgement is available online here. Seadrill lost.
We also don’t have time or space to deal with another case involving Cypriot tanker billionaire, former Dubai resident and Seadrill founder John Fredriksen. This is a claim involving an oil trading company named the Arcadia Group, which companies controlled by Mr Fredriksen purchased, and was beset with allegations of fraud against its former senior managers, after the business lost hundreds of millions of dollars in 2015.
The fraud claim had stretched out over ten years from 2015 but was resolved last year when the court found that the Arcadia managers had not colluded to defraud the company, but had acted by what they believed was best for the Arcadia Group.
Lawyers King and Spalding reported in their summary of the case that both Mr Fredriksen and his former partner Tor Olav Trøim were criticised in the judgment by Mr Justice Henshaw for their evidence as witnesses. The judge noted that Mr Fredriksen gave “implausible” evidence and was found to have, “seemingly regardless of the facts, apparently convinced himself that he had been the victim of a fraud”. Mr Trøim was found to have made an “unfortunate omission” as regards a central aspect of the case, such that his evidence was rendered “unsatisfactory.”
How unexpected and disappointing.
We know from the case of Christopher Eppinger, the owner of a quarry in Guyana and an oil trader, who claimed to have made US$250 million in profits in just three years trading mainly Russian crude, that oil trading can be phenomenally profitable.
Now the defendants from the fraud claim, Mr Bosworth and Mr Hurley, are fighting back, along with other defendants. The two former executives from Arcadia claim that the freezing orders against them, which they say prevented them from starting their own oil trading business, have literally cost them US$1 billion, which they are now seeking to recover from Mr Fredriksen’s company. Bloomberg's coverage is here.
Let’s hope this case doesn’t take ten years.
In many of these cases, one suspects that the main winners will be the lawyers themselves. Lawsuits are long and expensive and are often subject to appeal, as Havila’s banks have discovered. Many of the events covered here stretch back a decade.
By all means, go to court to assert your legal rights, but don’t expect it to be quick or easy or cheap.
It could be worse, however. Kompromat.ai reported last week that the Russian courts took 26 years to confirm the legality of the divorce of the ex-head of Lukoil, Valentin Ivanov, after he registered it through the Russian Consulate in Singapore in the year 2000.
His ex-wife Elena must now return to him luxury real estate, a yacht, and a Bentley.
Background reading
In 2024 we covered more courtroom dramas in energy, with Dolphin Drilling’s disputes in Nigeria and the UK, the Bourbon lost luggage corruption case in France, and Seatrium of Singapore’s battles against Awilco over cancelled newbuilding rig contracts. We also have the criminal trial of Nigeria’s former oil minister ongoing in the UK for bribe-taking, along with that of her brother, a former bishop, for money laundering.
Our update on REV Ocean is here. Solstad’s letter to its shareholders explaining the rationale for the transaction in January 2024 remains relevant and can be viewed here.
