Is it possible to achieve extra profit by doing business with shipyards – which have been collapsing under the weight of losses and debts for years, making it difficult for the state to sell them? Apart from certain cooperators and mid-ranking eternal shipyard managers, it seems that no one else can get rich by working in shipyards, writes the portal novilist.hr
However, one piece of data from the business audit document of 3. maj for the year 2008 offers an interesting answer – yes, there are those who can be successful and wealthy by doing business with shipyards, and those are brokers. Namely, in 2008 alone, brokers who mediate between ship orderers and the 3. maj shipyard received a commission of as much as 3 million dollars from the Rijeka shipyard!
Rijeka native Željko Petrović and his Adriatic Shipbrokers pocket nearly a million US dollars for each newbuilding found. The company has been based in the British Virgin Islands, one of the tax havens in the world, since 1994. From 1997 to early 2004, 3. maj realized the construction of 11 ships through Petrović’s offshore.
The broker who marked the past 13-year period by contracting the largest number of ships for the 3. maj shipyard – except for the order of ‘Latvians’, almost all others, and all were mostly built with record losses – is registered in the British Virgin Islands. This is the offshore Adriatic Shipbrokers with a representative office in Opatija, managed by Rijeka native Željko Petrović since 1994. The brokerage commission of Adriatic Shipbrokers at 3. maj is around 2 percent of the contracted price for the construction of the ship, and it is always paid by only one party – the shipyard.
Considering that the average contracted value for ship construction at 3. maj is around 30 million dollars, Adriatic Shipbrokers pockets nearly a million US dollars for each newbuilding found. Since Adriatic Shipbrokers is the broker with by far the most realized deals at 3. maj, there is almost no newbuilding in which he or one of his partners is not involved, raising the question of how he achieves such success that his competition can only envy. (www.novilist.hr)
