An article on these pages last week regarding the share price of Crowley Maritime Corp contained inaccurate headlines wrongly suggesting that Crowley had offered to buy out dissident shareholders' shares.

The headlines also mistakenly confused a group of employees acquiring shares with the group of dissident shareholders.

The text of the body of the story was accurate.

TradeWinds regrets the errors and any confusion the headlines may have caused.

Separately, TradeWinds has been asked to point out that the dissident shareholders referred to in the story act independently of one another and do not constitute a group in a legal sense.

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Crowley workers are rejecting the company's offer to buy back shares.

Crowley Maritime Corp says the fair market value of its unlisted stock has hit $1,913 per share. But even this price is too low to satisfy a group of dissident shareholders of Crowley, which is by some measures the largest US domestic or "Jones Act" shipowner.

New York investment banker Gary Lutin, spokesman for the Crowley shareholder forum, tells TradeWinds the company would now have to pay around $2,500 per share to buy out its dissidents. They might have accepted $1,600 per share a year back, says Lutin.

The dissidents do not pose a threat to control of the company, in which Oakland-based president, chief executive officer and chairman Tom Crowley Jr holds a majority of shares and votes.

However, they have been pursuing litigation against management over what they consider the neglect of their rights as shareholders. The $1,913 per share mentioned by Crowley was determined by independent assessors in connection with a fresh issue of unregistered shares for purchase by an employee stock ownership plan (ESOP).

The transaction disclosed this week in a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is dated 15 June.

The valuation is "based on a non-marketable minority interest" in common shares, says Crowley in the filing. Crowley dissidents are said to regard this as a damning admission of their own contention that management policies have contributed to illiquidity and depressed the value of their shares.

The new price represents a 36% increase over last summer's price of $1,402. The Pink Sheets listing of over-the-counter traded stocks lists the annual low and high of the rare share at $1,800 and $1,805, respectively.

Crowley set up its ESOP last August with an initial issuance of 1,000 shares. This year, the employee scheme bought 2,000 more shares at the new price for some $3.8m. The money to purchase the shares was borrowed from Crowley for 10 years at a fixed 5% per year. Shares offered only to an ESOP need not be registered with the SEC. Plan provisions mean many ESOP shares could revert to the company.

According to earlier filings, the ESOP releases shares to employees as principal on the company loan is paid. Shares vest with eligible employees after they have been employed for five years. The employees then have a put option, allowing them to sell shares to the company at fair market value as determined by the ESOP.

Crowley says the ESOP now owns 3,000 of Crowley's 90,744 outstanding shares of common stock. The dissident group was thought to control around 10% of voting power in the lightly traded Crowley share before the new ESOP share issue.

Some members of the group have been involved in Delaware litigation with Crowley over allegations that management neglected its fiduciary duty towards minority shareholders through policies designed to entrench and perpetuate the principal shareholder's control.

Crowley is legally a public company in the sense that it is subject to SEC disclosure rules but it notes in its financial filings and on its website that it is predominantly owned by Crowley family members and employees and is not publicly traded.

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