Global Sails into More Favorable Waters

Global Ocean Carriers Ltd., which had a $600,000 loss after  depreciation in the fourth quarter of 1990, expects to benefit  from the upturn in dry cargo freight rates over the past  several months.

James Fairbairn, chief financial officer for Global,  said the company should benefit from higher freight rates as it  refixes ships when their charters expire in March and April.

But Fairbairn said there was “a lot of uncertainty” about  whether rates would stay high over the summer and said he did  not expect they would prevail over the entire year.   As measured by the Baltic Freight Index, dry cargo rates have  climbed from 1348 on November 30, 1990 to over 1700 in recent  weeks.

Global’s results in the fourth quarter 1990 reflected the low  rates in effect for most of the period. The company said  several of its vessels were refixed during the quarter on  voyage or short-term charters at the lowest rates that the  company had experienced since being formed in 1988. High bunker  fuel costs continued to effect vessels on voyage charters.   Continue Reading

BONY Committed to Shipping Despite Closure

Petros Papadopoulos, ship finance manager at the London office of Bank of New York (BONY), has apparently become the latest victim of the general retrenchment in the US banking sector. His job has been terminated, signaling the end of BONY’s presence in the UK shipping scene. But the bank was at pains to stress that this did not signal a total withdrawal from ship finance.    Continue Reading

American President Buys Back Stock

American President Cos. says the expenditure of more than  $78.6 million to repurchase more than 3.8 million shares of its  common stock from Itel Corp. will have a limited effect on its  operations in the coming year.

Director of corporate finance and investor relations  spokesman Randall Gausman said that the stock buyback for  $20.50 a share will not change the company’s dividend policy or  prevent it from making needed capital expenditures. He says the  company expects to payback the loan in a reasonably short  period of time.   Continue Reading

Three More Ships Join the Frontline

Dazed officials at Hyundai and Daewoo sacrificed some of their beauty sleep recently to launch three ships in the middle of the night. The unusual ceremony was conducted by spotlight to coincide with an evening jamboree organized by the Swedish company Frontline, the owners of the 167,000 dwt OBO carriers. Guests at the party in Stockholm were invited to view the launching by satellite – an innovative spectacle according to those present. The Frontline party viewed the ceremony at 8pm Swedish time, while the Koreans were launching the ships at around 2am. Frontline director Bo Pernemar told Marine Money, “The ships will probably enter service in April or early May, but no firm employment plans have yet been decided. An interesting feature of the ships is that they all have double hulls and double skins to take account of the environmental considerations.”   Continue Reading

Shipping Stock Brokers

The crew of researchers following the shipping industry at Wall Street investment houses has lost another member.  Research analyst Sally Smith of Alex Brown & Sons Inc. will no longer train her spyglass on the shipping industry, but will follow consumer product companies such as Black & Decker for the Baltimore-based brokerage firm. However, she will continue to keep tabs on International Shipholding Corp. – which her firm helped with a secondary offering and placement of private debt.

Marine Money caught up with Smith as she set sail on her new job for a brief chat about the shipping industry, and contacted some of her colleagues at other brokerages.

Why don’t shipping stocks in the United States attract more interest by the research departments of U.S. brokerage firms? Smith and other researchers agree that the relatively small  capitalization of the industry is the core of the problem.  Brokerage firms can get more “bang for the buck” covering industrrrstrustrndustries that have more public companies and stocks with a greater number of shareholders and float. “There is not a lot of trading and ultimately that is what supports and pays for research,” says Jim Winchester, an analyst at Mabon, Nugent & Co. Continue Reading

AT&T Christens New Cable Ship at FELS

The new American Telephone & Telegraph Company (AT&T) cabel ship was christened at the Far East Levingston Shipbuilding Pioneer Yard.  The cable ship, the Global Link, is the first of three cabnd is due for deliveryle ships being built by FELS.  The second is due for delivery in mid-1991 and the third by the end of 1992.  The Global Link, which cost S$100m, will be employed in laying a new TAT-9 Trans-Atlantic fiber optic cable. The new TAT-9 is capable of carrying 80,000 simultaneous conversations compared with only 48 by traditional copper cable. Continue Reading