Nordbank Eyes Bad Shipping Debt Deals
The world’s largest financier of ships HSH Nordbank AG wants to move forward in 2015 with the removal of bad shipping loans that racked up during a seven-year glut in the global container fleet, reports Bloomberg.
The bank plans several transactions in which external shipping companies to take over ships of HSH-strapped borrowers, said Wolfgang Topp, head of restructuring division of HSH.
He expects that the bank will speedily wrap up as many as three transactions with a gross value of 1.5 billion euros this year.
Some transactions had failed in 2014, the Hamburg-based ship financer's market forecast didn't work well particularly concerning bulk carriers, differed from that of market participants. A dispute over ship and charter prices thwarted attempts last year to replicate a $300 million deal with Greek ship-owner Navios Group in 2013.
HSH and other ship finance like NordLB are affected by the crisis in container shipping, which suffers from too high capacities at too low transport demand since seven years now.
NordLB, Germany’s second-biggest financier of ships is also working to reduce potential losses and plans to dispose of its bad shipping loans by 2019, partly by drawing Asian private-equity funds to invest in distressed vessels.
