Vessel Finance News

On March 5, 2025, the United States Senate passed an important bill to authorize funding for our United States Coast Guard, after failing to do so in the previous Congress. S. 524, the Coast Guard Authorization Act of 2025, would if enacted into law authorize appropriations to fund the Coast Guard totaling $30.45 billion for fiscal years 2025 and 2026. The bill is sponsored by Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee Chairman Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) and cosponsored by Senators Maria Cantwell (D-WA), Dan Sullivan (R-AK), and Tammy Baldwin (D-WI).

Global law firm K&L Gates LLP has added Felisa Sanchez as of counsel in the maritime and finance practices. She joins the firm’s Houston office from Foley & Lardner LLP.Sanchez focuses her practice on a wide variety of corporate, finance, and commercial matters for domestic and international clients in the financial services, maritime, transportation, and energy sectors. She has nearly 20 years of experience representing public and private companies in complex transactions, including maritime financings and restructurings…

Australian meat and livestock distributor Wellard said that it has extended ship finance repayment schedules for two of its vessels, the 12,665 GT Ocean Ute and the 33,774 GT Ocean Drover.The live cattle exporter said in a press note that it has reached a conditional agreement with Ruchira Ships Limited to extend by 24-28 months the repayment schedules for the above mentioned vessel duo until December 2021.Originally, AUD 20 million was due to be paid between now and December 2019.Ruchira effectively provides vessel finance on each of these vessels through a sale and leaseback contract. If the agreement becomes unconditional (on Ruchira obtaining board approval)…

Companies, lenders, and their auditors worldwide need vessel appraisals that can be relied upon when put into legal documents. As the offshore energy support markets awaken, this is more important now, than ever.While a great deal of shipping finance is done at a 10,000' level, with bond deals and equity swaps, the value of the assets found on ground level are still very important. There are taxation issues, insured value, public reporting, and allocation of purchase price, where the value of individual vessels is important.

Matson, Inc. announced the issuance of $200 million in privately placed 15-year final maturity senior unsecured notes pursuant to a previously announced commitment letter on July 18, 2016. The notes will have a weighted average life of approximately 8.5 years and will bear interest at a rate of 3.14 percent, payable semiannually. Matson said it plans to proceeds from the notes to pay down the its revolving credit facility and for general corporate purposes. Joel Wine, Matson's Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer commented, “We are pleased to complete this attractive fixed rate financing that will pay down our revolving credit facility and strengthen our balance sheet as we progress with our four vessel Hawaii fleet renewal program.

Matson Navigation Company, Inc., a subsidiary of container shipper Matson, Inc., has signed a contract with U.S. shipbuilder General Dynamics NASSCO to build two new combination container and roll-on/roll-off (Con-Ro) vessels for its Hawaii fleet at a contract price of $511 million for both vessels with deliveries scheduled for the end of 2019 and mid-year 2020. Matson is calling these vessels the Kanaloa Class in honor of the ocean deity revered in the native Hawaiian culture and will name each of the new vessels after predecessor ships from its 134-year history.

Three things: experience, experience, and … experience. It’s a very familiar scenario: And, if you are the CFO, controller, president or other financial manager of your company then you have been here before. Across your conference table sits a potential new lender. He/she is very genuine in their desire to lend you money on your boats. They sincerely want to be a valued and trusted advisor to you in all things vessel-finance related. But what may be lacking is an in depth knowledge of the commercial marine industry that can only come from time and exposure to the peculiarities of our industry. Actually, it’s easy to understand why this lender tells you they want to loan you money.

Ain’t love grand? There’s the courtship phase: the wine, the roses, the proposal; the blood tests come back approved by the credit committee . . . finally the borrower and the lender fund the deal and tie the knot forever, walking off into the sunset in vessel finance ecstasy. Or, so the happy ending should go. But for some, there will be a time when the relationship with their vessel’s lender hits the proverbial rocks. The relationship might, in certain circumstances be salvageable, but in others, it will end in an abandoned ship . . . foreclosure. More often than not, this breakup is usually caused by the borrower’s failure to pay as agreed due to any number of financial or other misfortunes that may have befallen him (or her).

KfW Group, Germany’s state-owned development lender, may make 1.5 billion Euros ($2 billion) of new shipping loans this year, even as rivals scale back operations in the crisis-hit industry. While that is less than new lending of 2 billion Euros in 2011, KfW IPEX-Bank plans to keep the size of its 13.5 billion- euro shipping portfolio “stable,” Christian K. Murach, head of transportation finance and a member of the lender’s management board, said in an interview in Frankfurt. Commerzbank AG (CBK), Germany’s second-largest lender, and Hamburg-based HSH Nordbank AG are scaling back their shipping portfolios amid new capital rules and to obtain approval for bailouts they received during the global financial crisis.

The House Armed Services Seapower and Expeditionary Forces Subcommittee received testimony on the Federal Ship Loan Guarantee Program, also known as Title XI, which facilitates financing of commercial ship construction in U.S. shipyards. Cynthia L. Brown, President of the American Shipbuilding Association, testified on the importance of funding and improving the program to increase commercial ship construction in the U.S. Members of the subcommittee in attendance were Chairman Gene Taylor (D-MS), Ranking Member Roscoe Bartlett (R-MD), Representatives Madeleine Bordallo (D-Guam), Rick Larsen (D-WA), and Joe Sestak (D-PA). Chairman Gene Taylor stressed the importance of Title XI…