Bourbon (group)

Bourbon operates in the field of surface and submarine maritime services, on oil, gas and wind farms.

The group then expanded into the offshore oil and gas maritime services sector, for which it acquired the companies Les Abeilles (towage) and Setaf-Saget (solid bulk transport) in 1996.

[3][4] The group separated from its historical activities between 2001 and 2002 and accelerated its refocusing on maritime services by positioning itself with, from 2003, on deep offshore maritime services in Brazil and West Africa and in 2004 on subsea operations by acquiring the company Gaia Enterprise, which a year later became Bourbon Offshore Gaia.

It is a question of exploiting the land heritage inherited by the group's chairman and managing director, Jacques de Chateauvieux.

The offshore market crisis continued and led Bourbon to sign a debt restructuring agreement with its creditor banks in mid-2017.

It reopened these negotiations on April 20, 2018: in agreement with its shareholders, it announced suspended rent payments and debt servicing pending ongoing negotiations with lessors and creditors, in order to focus funds on "operational priorities and market recovery", which "should encourage parties to reach an agreement as soon as possible".

In view of the financial difficulties, its shareholders authorize it to postpone for one year an interest payment of approximately 3.9 million euros normally due in April 2018.

The court's decision on the takeover of the group comes on December 23, 2019 when only one official offer from the creditor banks has been filed.

Faced with the deepest crisis that the oil industry has gone through since the 1990s, Bourbon announced in February 2018 a strategic action plan "#Bourboninmotion".