State Development Bank News

Russian state development bank VEB said on Tuesday it has provided first tranche worth $66 million to Rosneft-led Zvezda shipyard to finance construction of the first Arc7 gas tanker for Novatek's Arctic LNG 2 project.VEB has said its board has approved financing for 15 Arc7 gas tankers for the Arctic LNG 2 project which is expected to start liquefied natural gas (LNG) production in the first part of the next decade in what will be Novatek's second big LNG plant.For its pilot LNG plant, Yamal LNG, Novatek has ordering Arc7 ice-class LNG tankers from South Korea's Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering (DSME).Reporting by Darya Korsunskaya

The Croatian government said on Thursday it would guarantee loans of up to 150 million kuna ($23 million) to keep one of the country's biggest shipyards afloat and give it time to find a strategic long-term partner.The 3.Maj shipyard in the northern Adriatic port of Rijeka is owned by Croatia's biggest shipbuilding group Uljanik whose other shipyard in the port of Pula has already been placed into bankruptcy procedure.Under EU state aid rules, the government cannot provide financial…

International sanctions have undermined the ability of Russia's Yamal LNG project to raise necessary funds but it will be launched as scheduled, Leonid Mikhelson, head of the plant's main shareholder, said in a televised interview on Tuesday. The company, co-owned by Gennady Timchenko, an ally of President Vladimir Putin, was placed under U.S. sanctions in 2014, soon after the final investment decision had been taken on the Yamal project in late 2013. The punitive measure makes it harder for the company, Novatek, to raise external debt. "Of course, technical difficulties due to sectoral sanctions against Novatek and automatically against Yamal LNG ... there are difficulties with attracting credit financing," Mikhelson told the state-run Rossiya-24 TV channel.

Germany's shipping lenders are preparing for sustained pain as weakening trade and an over-supply of ships show no signs of easing, industry officials said. Europe's biggest economy was one of the world's main centres of global ship finance before the 2008 credit crisis and the five most involved banks still have around 80 billion euros ($88 billion) of loans outstanding to the sector, a difficult exposure to manage given tighter scrutiny from bank regulators. "The structural imbalance from the over-supply of transport capacity and low demand will continue and we don't expect any encouraging upswing as a result," shipping bank DVB Chief Executive Ralf Bedranowsky said on Thursday.

German bank NordLB and two partners have formed a joint venture that will specialise in advising on the restructuring of non-performing ship loans, the state-backed lender said on Monday. The shipping industry has been stuck in a multi-year slump brought about by global economic weakness and overcapacity, weighing heavily on lenders with exposure to the sector, including NordLB, HSH, Commerzbank and state development bank KFW. The venture, Crystal Ocean Advisors, will offer restructuring services for troubled ship financing portfolios but will not take ownership of the assets. NordLB, shipper Offen Group and alternative assets specialist Caplantic will each own a third of the business, NordLB said.

A deal to raise financing for the Novatek-led Yamal LNG project in Russia is in its final stages, Chairman of Gazprombank, Andrey Akimov, told Reuters. Gazprombank is a co-lender to Yamal LNG on the Russian side, along with Sberbank. State development bank VEB has pledged $3 billion in banking guarantees to the project. Akimov said that Chinese lenders are set to provide $12 billion, Russian banks $4 billion, and export credit agencies are expected to put up another $4 billion. He said he planned to travel to China in early November for talks on the deal.

Russia's Novatek may get funds from the National Wealth Fund for its Yamal LNG project before the year-end, a minister said, as part of government plans to support sanction-hit companies. Russia's No.2 gas producer, co-owned by an ally of President Vladimir Putin, Gennady Timchenko, was put on the Western sanctions list over Moscow's role in the Ukraine crisis, limiting its ability to raise funds in Western markets. The government has pledged to support sanctions-hit companies irrespective of their shareholder structure, using National Wealth Fund as one of the options. Under the plan, NWF may buy bonds issued by some of such firms.

Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe touted the success of his economic policies on a visit to Brazil on Friday and said it was time for the two nations to expand their trade and investment partnership. On the first visit to Brazil in a decade by a Japanese prime minister, Japanese banks extended $700 million in loans to boost Brazilian soy and corn exports to Japan and build ship platforms for Brazil's burgeoning offshore oil industry. Abe told Brazilian business leaders that Japan has closed a 15-year deflation cycle since his stimulus policies began to kick in and there is great potential to expand trade and investment with Latin America's biggest economy. "With Japan growing again, we can grow with other nations," he said in comments to executives translated by an interpreter.

Brazil's state-controlled oil company Petrobras signed on Friday a $500 million loan from Japan to build eight ship platforms for the oil industry, as part of the visit of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to Brazil. Japan will also help Brazil's state development bank BNDES promote investment by small and medium-sized companies in Brazil through its bank for international cooperation, JBIC, according to another deal signed in the Brazilian presidential palace. (Reporting by Anthony Boadle; Writing by Silvio Cascione; Editing by Meredith Mazzilli)

Valor Economico, the Brazilian newspaper, has reported that Mitsui & Co is in talks with three Brazilian construction companies and Brazil’s state development bank to build a shipyard in the country. According to the report, Japan’s second biggest trading company is talking to Rio de Janeiro-based bank BNDES, suggesting that the latter take a minority stake in the shipyard, which would also have as shareholders Brazilian construction groups Camargo Correa, Andrade Gutierrez and Odebrecht. The paper cited Darc Costa, the bank’s vice president.

According to Bloomberg, Petroleo Brasileiro SA, Brazil's state-controlled oil company, may purchase tankers from Brazilian shipyards to export ethanol as the company moves to quadruple foreign sales of the biofuel. The ships would expand a plan to build 42 vessels for Rio de Janeiro-based Petrobras's fleet of tankers as increased oil, gas and fuels production transforms Brazil from an energy importer into an energy exporter, said Sergio Machado, head of Transpetro, the company's transportation unit. Machado expects the first such ethanol tanker, which would likely be a 75,000 metric-ton, Panamax-class fuel tanker treated to resist the biofuel's corrosive effect on steel, to be built by 2011.