including the Press Association, Asia Pulse, Agence France Presse, Agencia EFE, the Australian Associated Press, ANSA, and other industry, press release and local newswires. A court of appeals case filed in 1987 identified through media reviews named Southern Star Shipping Company, Inc., and West Wind Africa Line, Ltd. as defendants. Southern Star was dismissed from the original case prior to trial. Southern Star was the shipping agent of Westwind Africa Line Ltd., a Liberian corporation which media reviews indicated may be related to George Coumantaros. No negative information surfaced during the media search of Southern Star Shipping Company, Inc. George S. Coumantaros Background George S. Coumantaros was born on July 23, 1922, in London, England. He was issued a social security number in New York, U.S.A., between 1936 and 1951. Media searches identified that he has been married for more than 52 years, has four children and 11 grandchildren. He is the patriarch of a well-connected Greek-US shipping family. The current ultimate holder of the family’s stake in the family’s companies is his son, John George Coumantaros. The Coumantaros family is noted to have a significant profile on the New York social scene, where they appear to be extremely well connected. The Coumantaros family is believed to be connected to U.S. former senior diplomat John Negroponte through his mother, Catherine Coumantaros. Negroponte, whose father was a Greek shipping magnate, served under the George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan administrations and his ambassadorial posts included Iraq in 2004 and 2005, following which he was the Director of National Intelligence until 2007. Negroponte’s mother has only a six-year age difference with George Coumantaros, and may be either a sister or cousin.
An April 2010 report by analysts at HSBC’s Global Research team expected FMN’s main rival Dangote Flour Mills to remain a “distant second” to FMN, which it predicted to retain a 46% market share until 2013. In its annual report for the year ended 31st March 2009 FMN reported a turnover of NGN 180.07 (US$1=NGN146 as of 3/31/2009) billion and a profit before tax of NGN 11.92 billion. This was revised to NGN 5.47 billion after “exceptional item” tax and NGN 3.89 billion after tax. FMN paid a dividend of 50 kobo per share, amounting to NGN 854.19 million. In February 2011 FMN announced pre-tax profits for the first nine months of its financial year ending 31st March 2011 of NGN 12.5 billion. Turnover rose over the period to NGN 117.5 billion as compared to NGN 112.2 billion the previous year. It expected profits for the year to reach NGN 16.5 billion. FMN is audited by Akintola Williams Deloitte. Capital Raising & Expansion FMN raised NGN 37.5 billion through a December 2010 corporate bond issue, the first in Nigeria outside the banking sector for a number of years. The issue was oversubscribed with the Group claiming to have received NGN 49.8 billion in bids from banks and a variety of other institutional investors. The issue was the first of a planned NGN 70 billion debt programme. Following the issue, Treasury Director Vlassis Liakouris (“Liakouris”) was quoted in the media stating that FMN was aiming to invest at least NGN 20 billion per year in expansion and acquisitions before 2014. The plans included adding four to six new mills to increase daily production capacity at its Apapa facility to over 8,000 tons.