Fredriksen’s trusts are not calling the top in tankers — they are closing a raid that failed in 2022
John Fredriksen · Famatown Finance · International Seaways · Form 4
Confirmed · Form 4 + 13D/A + 3 aggregators
Reported 28 Oct 2026
No 10b5-1 reported
Residual holding derived
- Who
- Famatown Finance Limited (Cyprus) holds the shares directly. Greenwich Holdings Limited (Cyprus) is its sole shareholder. C.K. Limited (Jersey) is trustee of two trusts that indirectly hold all of Greenwich and Famatown. John Fredriksen established the trusts for his immediate family; the filing states he is neither trustee nor beneficiary, has no economic interest, and disclaims control, while acknowledging he may have indirect influence over C.K. Limited as settlor.
- What they did
- 9 Oct: 100,000 shares at a weighted average $121.551 (range $121.500–$121.780). 13 Oct: 37,888 at $121.991 ($121.540–$122.515) plus 1,029 at $124.481. 14 Oct: 64,821 at $125.053 ($125.000–$125.215). Total 203,738 shares for about $25,011,000.
- The document
- Form 4 reported 28 October 2026. The preceding Form 4, reported 16 October, covered 14 sales from 30 April to 8 October — 1,106,190 shares for about $107,307,431. Schedule 13D/A Amendment No. 6, accepted 8 October at 17:03 ET on a 7 October event, reports 6,704,304 shares, 13.54% of 49,531,311 outstanding, all shared voting and shared dispositive power and zero sole power. Items 3 and 4 state no material changes.
Four selling rounds in one calendar year, by realised price. March and May figures are as tallied by one trade outlet; September and October figures are from the Form 4 lines. The 2022 entry price is the same outlet’s figure for Famatown’s original accumulation.
| Round | Window | Weighted avg | vs 2022 entry |
|---|
| Entry | 2022 accumulation | $20.34 | — |
| Round 1 | March 2026 | $75.52 | 3.71× |
| Round 2 | 30 Apr – 11 May | $84.72 | 4.16× |
| Round 3 | from 18 Sep | $113.88 | 5.60× |
| Round 4 | 9 – 14 Oct | $122.76 | 6.03× |
Consensus read
The best-informed family in tankers is selling into the best tanker market in a decade. Crude is above $100, International Seaways closed at a record $121.82 on 8 October, and a 13.5% holder is reducing into it without a plan to excuse the timing.
Steelmanned, this is the strongest available sell signal in the sector. Fredriksen’s cycle-timing record is the reason shipping desks read his filings at all; a family office trimming a six-bagger at an all-time high is exactly what calling a top looks like from the outside, and the absence of a 10b5-1 plan removes the usual defence that the trades were set months ago.
Contrarian read
This is not a view on tanker rates. It is the orderly wind-down of a control position that was blocked four years ago, and the sector call is being read off the wrong stake.
Famatown bought about 16% of International Seaways in five weeks in 2022 at roughly $20.34. The target adopted a rights plan within two weeks and extended it to 2029 in April 2026, naming Famatown in the filing as an affiliate of a competitor. The trusts are liquidating the holding they cannot use, on a schedule, while the Frontline stake they can use sits untouched.
Evidence that discriminates
- The price path, which only one reading survives. The trusts sold at about $75.52 in March and about $122.76 this month — they began selling 62% below where they are selling now and did not stop once on the way up. A cycle-timer does not start at $75 and keep going through $85, $114 and $123. A seller working down a position on a calendar does exactly that. This is the crux: it is the one fact that the top-call reading cannot absorb.
- The asymmetry between the two tanker stakes. The same two trusts sit above Hemen Holding, which last reported 35.6% of Frontline in March 2026, with a Seatankers investment director on Frontline’s board since February. No filing reachable here reports any reduction in that holding. A view on tanker rates applies to both positions; a view on control applies to only one. Selling the stake you were fenced out of while keeping the stake you sit on the board of separates the readings cleanly.
- The defences the target built, named in its own filing. A rights plan adopted within two weeks of the 2022 accumulation, extended to 2029 in April 2026, with Famatown identified as an affiliate of a competitor, is a documented obstacle to the thing the position was bought for. It is dated, specific, and it exists in the issuer’s filings rather than in interpretation.
Facts that do not discriminate, and which most coverage will lean on: the record INSW price, record tanker day rates, and crude above $100. Every one of those is equally consistent with a cycle call and with a scheduled wind-down. They are the reason the consensus reading feels well-evidenced when it is not.
What would falsify me
A filing inside the next two quarters showing Hemen Holding reducing Frontline materially — below roughly 30% — would make this a sector call after all, and the control story a coincidence of which stake happened to be liquid. That is the clean test, and it is observable.
Equally: a Schedule 13D/A amending Item 4 to state an intention to dispose of the International Seaways position entirely. The current amendments all report no material change under that item. A stated disposal intent would turn this from a control wind-down into a plain exit and make the question of which stake irrelevant.
Pattern vs their own history
Four rounds in 2026 and no Rule 10b5-1 plan reported on any of them. Through 8 October, filings tally 1,458,124 shares sold for about $132.3m; this filing adds 203,738 shares for about $25.0m. The holding has walked from roughly 16% at the 2022 peak to 13.54% on 8 October. Derived, not filed: 6,704,304 less 203,738 leaves 6,500,566 — 566 shares above a round 6,500,000. The near-round landing echoes the exact round landings in the Talos programme, but 566 shares is a miss, so it is suggestive and nothing more. Note also that 13.54% to roughly 13.13% is a 0.41-point move, below the threshold that would compel a 13D amendment — which is why the Seaways programme raises no filing question and the Talos one does.
The “fleeing the wealth tax” story about Markus Persson cannot be true, and the measure’s own text is why
Markus Persson · Beverly Hills listing · Reported 28 October 2026
Single-source on the listing
Ballot mechanics confirmed · 2 sources
Measurement attack
No transaction recorded
- Who
- Markus “Notch” Persson, Swedish creator of Minecraft, who sold Mojang to Microsoft in 2014.
- What he did
- Listed his Trousdale Estates house — about 22,300 sq ft, eight bedrooms, fifteen bathrooms, a recording studio and a private nightclub — for $70,000,000. He paid $70,000,000 for it in 2014, then a record for a Los Angeles-area home, and has since spent, per the reporting, millions more on it.
- The document
- There isn’t one. This is a listing, not a deed: no recorded sale, no transfer, no filed change of residency. The only attributed statement is from the listing agent, who says Persson “simply isn’t spending much time in Los Angeles anymore.” The headline that carried the story says he is fleeing the state; the body of the same story does not say he has moved.
Consensus read
A billionaire is getting out of California six days before voters decide a one-time 5% levy on billionaires’ net worth.
Steelmanned, the circumstantial case is good. The measure qualified on 17 June with 980,438 valid signatures and goes to the ballot on 3 November. The Legislative Analyst’s Office puts it at 200–250 affected individuals and roughly $100bn of one-time revenue. PPIC in May and the LA Times in March both reported majority support. Peter Thiel is reported to be funding $3m of opposition. Six of roughly 214 California billionaires are reported to have already left. A trophy California asset hitting the market in that week looks like exactly what it is being called.
Contrarian read
The listing cannot be avoidance of this tax, because the measure’s eligibility date is already nine months in the past — and on the measure’s own asset definitions, selling the house would make his exposure worse rather than better.
What is actually in the story is a price: he is asking exactly what he paid twelve years ago. That is the number that explains the decision, and it is the one number the coverage dropped.
Evidence that discriminates
- The eligibility date is fixed in the past. The measure reaches billionaires who held California residence after 1 January 2026. Whatever Persson’s status was on that date, a listing in late October 2026 does not change it. This is precisely why the six reported departures are described as going before or around that deadline — the deadline is the whole mechanism. An actor avoiding a tax with a fixed historical eligibility date does not act ten months after it. This separates the two readings on its own: the consensus reading requires the action to be capable of achieving its stated purpose, and it is not.
- Real estate is outside the tax base; cash and securities are inside it. The base covers businesses, stocks, bonds, art, collectibles and intellectual property, and excludes real estate, pensions and retirement accounts. Converting an excluded $70m house into $70m of included proceeds moves value into the measured base. Stated with its caveat: the valuation date is reported inconsistently across sources — 1 January 2026 in one summary of the initiative, 31 December 2026 in another. Under the earlier date the sale is irrelevant to liability; under the later one it is actively counterproductive. There is no reading of the measure on which selling the house helps.
- The asking price is a real-terms loss, and it is the only figure that explains the listing. $70,000,000 in 2014 and $70,000,000 in 2026 is nominally flat; on US CPI that is a decline of roughly 30% in real terms, before counting the improvements the reporting says he made. Tax flight is indifferent to the sale price of the house. A seller asking exactly his 2014 entry after twelve years and significant capital expenditure is a seller clearing an asset that did not work, and that is a complete explanation requiring no ballot measure at all.
- The usual transaction-cost argument is in the wrong city. Trousdale Estates is in the City of Beverly Hills, not the City of Los Angeles, so Measure ULA — the 5.5% transfer levy routinely cited as the tax driving luxury sellers out of Southern California — does not apply to this property at all.
Not discriminating: the timing relative to the vote. A listing six days before the election is consistent with tax motivation and with coincidence, and in a market where ultra-prime listings cluster in the autumn it is weak on its own. The date is what made the story; it is not what settles it.
What would falsify me
Documentation that Persson ceased California residency on or before 1 January 2026 — a part-year return, a recorded change of principal residence, or a dated public statement. That would make this listing the tail end of a properly timed exit and the tax framing right but late, which is a materially different story from the one told.
Equally: a statement from Persson or his representatives naming the ballot measure as the reason. He is an unusually direct communicator in public; one post would settle it against me. Neither exists in anything reachable here, which is the position this reading is taken from.
Pattern vs his own history
He bought in 2014 at a then-record price and has held for twelve years. One listing is not a behavioural pattern, which is why this item sits in the log and not on the anomaly board. Inference, not document: whether Persson is or was a California resident for tax purposes is not established by anything in the reporting. He is a Swedish citizen whose Mojang proceeds were realised in 2014. The entire consensus reading rests on a residency status nobody in the coverage checked.