One of New York’s biggest shipping tycoons is back in troubled waters.
Peter Georgiopoulos, whose Genco Shipping & Trading operates a fleet of 53 tankers, missed a $3 million payment to its lenders this week, a victim of a steep drop in rental prices for tankers.
Genco shares, which traded as high at $25 as recently as 2010, closed Wednesday at $1.37, down 24 percent.
Georgiopoulos, 52, whose long silver mane and supermodel wife Kara Young are not unknown to New York’s paparazzi, has to shell out about $11,000 a day to operate one of Genco’s tankers, but rental rates have dropped to about $10,000 a day, the company, a bulk shipper, said recently, putting Genco in a bind.
The tattered tycoon is discussing a debt-for-equity swap with Genco lender Centerbridge Partners, The Post has learned.
The private-equity firm would take control of the company in a pre-packaged bankruptcy but leave him in place to run the operation, sources said.
For Georgiopoulos, a West Village resident who in 2008 claimed he was worth $2 billion, it’s his second shipwreck in two years.
In 2012, Oaktree Capital Management reached a deal with Georgiopoulos to repossess General Maritime Corp. through a pre-packaged bankruptcy.
He was also left in charge of that company.
“I think he’s been knocked off his pedestal,” a shipping source investor said. “He’s not a shipping giant anymore.”
While amassing and losing a fortune in shipping, Georgiopoulos, who cut his teeth on Wall Street as a Drexel Burnham investment banker, is a trader at heart, sources said.
For example, in December, he worked out a plan with Blackstone to finance a deal in which General Maritime, one of the world’s largest oil shippers, would buy tankers from industry giant Maersk.
Poised to win the auction, he looked around for better financing instead of closing the deal, a source close to the situation said.
When Blackstone execs found out they “told him to stuff it,” the source said.
General Maritime was simply beat in the auction and its relationship with Blackstone is fine, a Georgiopoulos spokesman said.
The sinking of his second shipping company — he still owns a third shipper, Aegean Marine Petroleum, an oil-services company — could surely put a crimp in his lifestyle.
In addition to his double-wide West Village brownstone, Georgiopoulos owns a sprawling 78-acre Dutchess County estate where, on occasion, he invites friends to go pheasant hunting, sources said.
He has donated plenty to various city charities. In fact, Catholic Charities of New York plans to honor him Feb. 27 as its man of the year.
Where he once boasted that he was a billionaire, Georgiopoulos’ 10 percent stake in Aegean Marine is worth just $45 million and the value of his Genco stake is down to $6 million.
Georgiopoulos declined to comment.