Bomel News

Noble Denton appointed Ian Bonnon as Group Managing Director, Renewables. Bonnon, will develop the renewables business globally and will report directly to group managing director, John Wishart. This strategically important role reflects Noble Denton’s intention to secure significant worldwide market share in the provision of engineering, consultancy and project management services to the renewables industry. Over the last ten years, Bonnon has led the development of the UK renewables business within Noble Denton and this new role underlines the company’s commitment to this emerging sector.

The Norwegian cartel authority Konkurransetilsynet has approved the merger of Noble Denton with Germanischer Lloyd (GL). The two companies had announced their merger on 1 April 2009. Together, Germanischer Lloyd and Noble Denton will form a global technical assurance and consulting company to serve the oil and gas sector. The purchase of Noble Denton is the largest corporate acquisition in the history of Germanischer Lloyd. Germanischer Lloyd and Noble Denton will provide consulting, assurance as well as project management on a worldwide scale especially for the oil & gas and renewable energy sectors as well as for the maritime industry. The spectrum of services ranges from design and construction, transportation and installation.

The merger of Noble Denton and Germanischer Lloyd forms an integrated technical assurance and consulting company to serve the worldwide energy industries. The new entity will provide assurance, inspection, and consulting as well as project management. It will focus its worldwide services along the entire life cycle oil and gas - upstream, midstream, and downstream, renewable and energy installations onshore and offshore. This includes safety, integrity, reliability and performance management. Germanischer Lloyd, headquartered in Hamburg, Germany, and Noble Denton, headquartered in London have followed similar growth strategies. Both organisations have conducted a number of acquisitions recently to complement their areas of expertise.

Noble Denton Group has joined an elite group of British businesses as it secured 59th place in this year’s Sunday Times Deloitte Buyout Track 100 list. Now in its second year, the prestigious league table ranks Britain’s top 100 private equity-backed mid-market companies with the fastest growing profits (EBITDA) over two years. The research analyses the profit performance of private equity-backed companies, rather than just the buyout deals. Noble Denton is one of 12 energy firms on the list and achieved 39.9% annual profit growth in 2006. The company joined forces with two Norwegian private equity firms, HitecVision and Ferncliff TIH in the same year.

A recent Formal Safety Assesment (FSA) for high speed catamaran ferries (HSC) has revealed the projected accident rate for this type of vessel is nearly five times the rate currently experienced. Also, the predicted risk level is considered high in relation to generally accepted limits of tolerability, arising from the potential for collision accidents at high speed in confined waters, such as coastal, port approach or harbor areas, where traffic density is likely to be highest. The findings of this study prompted the U.K. to develop risk control options, which were evaluated for both their effectiveness at reducing the risk of accident, as well as the cost of implementation. High speed catamaran ferries (HSC) constitute a rapidly developing sector of the shipping industry.