Wide-open ownership structure in the archipelago’s dominant industrial company.
The Faroe Islands has a GDP of USD 2.7 billion. In comparison, the country’s most important company, Bakkafrost, has a market capitalisation of USD 3.7 billion.
Fisheries and aquaculture dominate the export revenues of the north sea state.
Bakkafrost has settled on the farming and export of salmon. But its gaze has always turned outwards. The owners are also largely located abroad. Among the ten largest owners, the entire six nations are represented.
Open ownership structure
With almost 5.2 million shares, the Norwegian Pension Fund is the largest owner in what appears to be a very open ownership structure.
Bakkafrost CEO Regin Jacobsen is comfortable with the ownership of the company.
“There is a legal limitation in the Aquaculture Act, that each investor can have up to 20 per cent,” Jacobsen explained to iLaks.
Limitation
Together with his mother, Oddvør, he owns 15.6 per cent of the company.
The Faroese authorities have also imposed a restriction that no company can control more than 50 percent of the archipelago’s farming licences.
Last year Jacobsen and Bakkafrost took the plunge out of the Faroe Islands and bought their first salmon farming business abroad. The Scottish Salmon Company was swallowed up in a million-dollar acquisition.
The company is guiding a total harvest volume of 89,000 tonnes of salmon this year, across Scotland and the Faroe Islands. This makes Bakkafrost the world’s sixth largest salmon farmer.
