DNV and GL merger on track: Tor Svensen

“We are on track with the merger. It is not a straightforward process to merge two classification societies,” Svensen, coo Asia Pacific and president of DNV oil and gas, told Nor-shipping media briefing in Oslo on Monday.

The merger announced last December will create the world’s largest class society with a market share of around 24% of vessels classed in the global fleet and 17,000 employees.

At present the two class societies are in the process of filing with competition authorities in various countries where they operate. Svensen said they expect this process to be completed by mid-to-late autumn.

As a result he said: “For all practical purposes 2013 will be almost a normal year for DNV and GL.”

While limited in how much work the two class societies can do together at this stage Svensen said they are in a process to ensure that from the day the merger gets the go ahead they will be operational.

In April they announced the merged executive management team comprising six executives from DNV and three from GL. Svensen said they had not looked at redundancies yet from the 17,000 strong workforce, however, both class societies implemented a hiring freeze from December last year. On average DNV sees 6% to 7% staff turnover annually.

In the merged class society’s role as a Recognised Organisation (RO) he said it was “top of our agenda to get that in place from the start”. Initially existing RO arrangements for the two individual class societies could run in parallel but it would be for a duration of  “weeks not months”.