Jpmorgan Chase News

The European Commission is helping the United Nations and Turkey try to extend a deal allowing the Black Sea export of Ukraine grain and is open to "explore all solutions," a European Union spokesperson said on Thursday, ahead of the deal's possible expiration on Monday.The U.N. and Turkey brokered the Black Sea Grain Initiative with Russia and Ukraine in July 2022 to help alleviate a global food crisis worsened by Moscow's invasion and blockade of Ukrainian ports. Ukraine and…

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has proposed to Russian President Vladimir Putin that he extend a deal allowing the safe Black Sea export of grain from Ukraine in return for connecting a subsidiary of Russia's agricultural bank to the SWIFT international payment system, sources told Reuters.Russia has threatened to ditch the grain deal, which expires on Monday, because several demands to dispatch its own grain and fertilizer abroad have not been met. The last two ships…

Florida-based marine services company Seacor Holdings said that its indirect wholly-owned tanker subsidiary SEA-Vista entered into an amended and restated $200 million credit agreement, which refinanced its existing credit facilities, with a syndicate of lenders led by JPMorgan Chase.The agreement provides for a $100 million revolving credit facility and a $100 million term loan facility, both of which mature in December 2024. The agreement allows SEA-Vista to use the borrowings for general corporate purposes, including acquisitions, and contains a $50 million accordion feature subject to lender approval.At closing, the revolving credit facility remained undrawn, and approximately $76 million of the term loan proceeds were used to fund the repayment of SEA-Vista’s original credit facility.

Kirby Corporation has announced that it has entered into an amended and restated credit agreement with a group of banks.The Credit Agreement, among other things:Extends the term of Kirby’s existing $850 million revolving credit facility to March 27, 2024 (the “Maturity Date”);Adds a new five-year term loan facility in the amount of $500 million which is repayable in quarterly installments commencing June 30, 2020 in increasing percentages of the original principal amount of the loan;Has a variable interest rate based on the London interbank offered rate (“LIBOR”), or a base rate calculated with reference to the agent bank’s prime rate, and varies with Kirby’s credit rating; andAllows for borrowings to be used for general corporate purposes including acquisitions. JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A.

Port officials on Tuesday are expected to consider $300 million in financing that would prepare the country's largest oil-export port - Corpus Christi, Texas - to handle a surge in U.S. shale production over the next five years.International buyers would like more U.S. crude but are unable to get it because of infrastructure constraints along the U.S. Gulf Coast. Terminals originally designed for imports only recently have revamped operations to handle exports including accepting…

A primer for navigating the ‘ups and downs’ of marine money for domestic stakeholders. Vessel financiers are resourceful and adaptable to changing markets. On the domestic side, financiers of Jones Act and “brown water” assets have continued to serve their customers through shifting shoals in both broader capital markets and in the marine markets – both known for their ups and downs. Marine finance can take many forms. In the broadest sense, funding can be done through loans, where the vessel is owned by the borrower…

Oil giant Saudi Aramco has selected JPMorgan Chase & Co, Morgan Stanley, and HSBC Holdings Plc as lead underwriters on the firm's planned initial public share offering, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday, citing people familiar with the matter. Saudi Arabian Oil Co, known as Saudi Aramco, was not immediately available for comment. Saudi authorities are aiming to list up to 5 percent of the world's largest oil producer on both the Saudi stock exchange in Riyadh, the Tadawul, and one or more international markets in an IPO that could raise $100 billion. The listing is the centerpiece of a Saudi Arabian government plan to transform the kingdom by enticing investment and diversifying the economy away from reliance on oil.

The American P&I Club was founded in New York nearly a century ago. To celebrate its first 100 years, a book entitled The American Club: A Centennial History has just been published. The book tells the story of the Club across ten decades of maritime and marine insurance history both within the United States and across the world. Its author is Richard Blodgett, a former Wall Street Journal reporter whose previous credits include histories of the New York Stock Exchange, Kohler and Co. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. The American Club was founded in February, 1917.

To cope up with so much financial strain, Hong Kong-based shipbuilders China Ocean Industry Group – formerly known as China Ocean Shipbuilding Industry Group – is literally being turned into a parking lot, reports Bloomberg. China Ocean Industry Group Ltd., which dropped “shipbuilding” from its name in March, acquired a car-park operator last year to meet an estimated shortage of 50 million parking spaces in the world’s most populous nation. The company plans to build and operate 100,000 lots in China within three years, contributing about 70 percent of total operating profit by then, according to Chief Executive Officer Zhang Shi Hong.

Australian thermal coal prices have fallen since the beginning of the month, pulled down by weak demand from China, and analysts said there was little hope for a rise in prices if China's imports do not pick up. China, the world's largest coal buyer and consumer, imported 13.54 million tonnes of coal in February, down 11.1 percent from January, figures from the General Administration of Customs of China showed this week. The ongoing demand and import slowdown in China is a result of its stalling economy, which is growing at its lowest pace in a generation, as well as structural shifts away from an industrialised to a more service-based economy alongside the government's efforts to rein in rampant pollution.

France’s CMA CGM has approached banks to finance its potential takeover bid for Singapore’s Neptune Orient Lines Ltd (NOL), reports Bloomberg. The world’s No. 3 container shipping company is in talks with banks including BNP Paribas SA, HSBC Holdings Plc and JPMorgan Chase & Co. for loans to back an offer for NOL. CMA CGM is the third largest container company in the world and has 8.8 per cent of market share according to container analyst Alphaliner. NOL was started as Singapore’s national shipping line, and following a US$285 million merger in 1997 with American President Lines (APL), it has developed into a company with more than 6,000 staff across 80 countries.

Petróleo Brasileiro SA denied on Friday that it has hired JPMorgan Chase & Co to handle the sale of oil exploration licenses in deep-sea areas off the coast this year. In a securities filing, the state-controlled oil producer known as Petrobras reiterated the need to reduce capital investments, dispose of assets and step up divestitures to preserve cash. Petrobras also said JPMorgan did not have a mandate to map out potential investors interested in acquiring licenses for subsalt oil reserves currently held by Petrobras. The company is in touch with banks to refinance existing credit lines or tap new ones, the filing said. The filing…

Late last November, the tanker Olympic Flag carrying 650,000 barrels of Angolan crude dropped anchor about 7 miles off the coast in Delaware Bay, a seemingly routine shipment destined for a nearby Philadelphia refinery. What happened next was anything but routine. Instead of discharging its cargo within days and heading off for the next port, the ship idled offshore for nearly 11 weeks, discharging the oil at an unaccountably slow rate, according to shipping sources as well as vessel tracking data on ThomsonReuters Eikon. That vessel finally set sail two weeks ago - but by then it had already been joined by five more idling tankers, an unusual and costly congregation that has puzzled experts and traders.

Late last November, the tanker Olympic Flag carrying 650,000 barrels of Angolan crude dropped anchor about 7 miles off the coast in Delaware Bay, a seemingly routine shipment destined for a nearby Philadelphia refinery. What happened next was anything but routine. Instead of discharging its cargo within days and heading off for the next port, the ship idled offshore for nearly 11 weeks, discharging the oil at an unaccountably slow rate, according to shipping sources as well as vessel tracking data on ThomsonReuters Eikon. That vessel finally set sail two weeks ago - but by then it had already been joined by five more idling tankers, an unusual and costly congregation that has puzzled experts and traders.

Swiss trading house Mercuria has moved to become a significant player in the marine fuel market by hiring a team of close to 40 former employees from the once-largest supplier, traders and sources close to the matter said on Tuesday. The bankruptcy of Denmark's OW Bunker, which had controlled around 7 percent of the global shipping fuel market and employed more than 600 people, has given Mercuria an opportunity to beef up its business shortly after it acquired the physical commodities unit of JPMorgan Chase & Co. The hiring of OW Bunker traders will help integrate Mercuria's existing fuel oil business, trading cargoes typically in sizes of 20,000 tonnes, and the sale of fuel in smaller lots to be delivered to ships, which take only up to around 5,000 tonnes per delivery.

Three of Australia's largest infrastructure funds plan to bid for the country's largest container terminal in a sale expected to fetch about A$5 billion ($4.27 billion) for Victoria state, a source with knowledge of the process said on Wednesday. The prospect of three bidders suggests Victoria, Australia's second most populous state, will reap a hefty price for the asset and encourage other Australian states looking to sell a combined A$130 billion of assets in the next 18 months. Pension fund IFM Investors has hired investment banks JPMorgan Chase & Co and Barclays Capital to prepare a bid for Port of Melbourne, while a consortium of Hastings Funds Management Ltd and Kuwait sovereign fund Wren House Infrastructure Management have hired UBS AG, the source said.

JPMorgan Chase & Co has hired Edwin Tay, formerly with Glencore, as a senior crude oil trader in Singapore, industry sources said on Wednesday. Tay starts with the U.S. bank in January, they said. JPMorgan declined comment. JPMorgan completed the sale of its multibillion-dollar physical commodities unit to Mercuria last year. The divestment was due to rising regulatory and political pressure in the United States while the bank wanted to focus on its core business of lending. Reporting by Florence Tan

The Directors of BP p.l.c. announced that the interim dividend for the third quarter 2014 would be US$0.10 per ordinary share (US$0.60 per ADS). This interim dividend is to be paid on 19 December 2014 to shareholders on the share register on 7 November 2014. The dividend is payable in cash in sterling to holders of ordinary shares and in US dollars to holders of ADSs. A scrip dividend alternative will be made available for this dividend allowing shareholders to elect to receive their dividend in the form of new ordinary shares and ADS holders in the form of new ADSs. US$6.946 for each new ordinary share. date of 6 November 2014. The…

When JPMorgan Chase & Co agreed to lead a $700 million bond offering for Russian gas producer Gazprom OAO, it was doing business that some U.S. banks are afraid to do, several lawyers and a banker said. Gazprom faces U.S. sanctions after the U.S. government widened its restrictions against Russia in September. U.S. companies are prohibited from providing goods or technology to Gazprom and others, although they can provide financial services to the companies, meaning JPMorgan obeyed the law in underwriting bonds for the company. Gazprom announced pricing for the deal on Thursday. Peter Kucik, a former U.S. Treasury official who left the department in March, said generally short-term transactions, such as underwriting bonds, should not be a problem. But he said U.S.

A New York-based commodities merchant bank run by veteran energy traders, Neal Shear and Kaushik Amin, announced on Friday plans to buy the aging Come by Chance refinery in Newfoundland from South Korea's state-run oil company. Korea National Oil Corp said it will sell the 115,000-barrel-per-day refinery to SilverRange Financial Partners LLC for an undisclosed price following a months-long search to find a buyer. The deal also includes 53 gas stations and convenience stores. SilverRange is a New York-based merchant bank focused on energy and natural resources owned by SilverPeak Partners, a real estate fund with over $12 billion in assets under management, according to its website.

Barclays is planning to withdraw from parts of the metals, agricultural and energy markets, echoing moves by other major players like JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley away from the commodities business, the Financial Times reported on Sunday. The UK bank is expected to announce the changes on Tuesday, which include heavy cuts to its global commodities trading staff, the newspaper reported. The FT said Barclays is making the move because conditions in the commodities markets have grown unfavorable recently. Revenues have fallen and regulators have increased their scrutiny of the space. Barclays declined to comment. Barclays Chief Executive Antony Jenkins has undertaken a third review of the investment bank in as many years in response to pressure to cut costs and improve returns…

A detailed new case study scrutinizing the risk-management Swiss-based Trafigura is the latest effort to "demystify" the once-secretive commodity trading industry, just big merchants seek to fill a void being left by Wall Street banks. The study, "The Economics of Commodity Trading Firms," comes as U.S. regulators mull new restrictions on banks' physical commodity trading, a crackdown some large energy companies say would rob them of credit-worthy, transparent counterparties and leave them at the mercy of shadowy and risky firms.

Blackstone Group LP is unlikely to make a foray into commodity trading in the short term as the world's largest alternative asset manager struggles to find a target to fit its asset-light business model, a senior executive said on Thursday. In his first earnings call with reporters since Blackstone lost out to Mercuria to buy JPMorgan Chase & Co's physical commodity division, Blackstone President Tony James said he is still interested in broadening the company's revenue through commodities. "It remains of interest, but I would not count on us doing anything in the short term," he said. James did not identify any potential targets. Instead…