Silk Holdings Goes Islamic

The rapidly growing offshore oil and gas industry in this region continues to attract strong investor interest, and new players are entering the market to take advantage of the attractive charter rates commanded by offshore vessels and equipment. Malaysia’s Silk Holdings is one such example.

Listed on the mainboard of Bursa Malaysia, Silk Holdings’s main business is to own and operate a 37 km highway in Malaysia. In 2009, the financially distressed company went through a comprehensive restructuring scheme and identified the oil and gas sector as a potential new business driver. It subsequently went on to acquire AQL Aman, the holding company that owns 70% of offshore marine support services company Jasa Merin, with the remaining 30% stake held by the Terengganu State Government. Today, the company operates a fleet of 12 offshore support vessels, providing offshore support services to leading oil majors such as Petronas and Exxon Mobil and plans to take delivery of another four vessels by the end of this year. Continue Reading

An Update on Stimulus Packages

Over the past year, the massive economic stimulus packages put together by policymakers around the globe have been grabbing the headlines, most notably from the United States, China and Japan. According to the latest estimates from IMF, Asian governments have pledged to pump over USD 950 billion into their economies through increased expenditure, tax cuts and cash hand-outs. And if we look closer at the figures, we would notice that fiscal stimulus in Asia is larger than other parts of the world. China, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan and Malaysia have all announced fiscal packages of more than 4% of GDP, twice as large as US’s stimulus this year.

Many governments in Asia have come up with plans to lend a helping hand to the shipping or shipbuilding industry – sectors that they consider to pivotal to their country’s economic well being. Continue Reading

Malaysia: Challenges and Opportunities

Marine Money Asia hits the road this week as we head to Kuala Lumpur to present at the Maritime Financing Seminar 2009 put together by our friend Nazery Khalid at the Maritime Institute of Malaysia (“MIMA”) with the sponsor OCBC Bank. More than any other cities in the country, Kuala Lumpur represents the focal point of Malaysia in many aspects and the same can be said for ship financing. The two day seminar gathered an impressive list of over 80 delegates to discuss the current state and the opportunities for the growing Malaysian shipping industry. In his opening address, Director General Dato Cheah Kong Wai from MIMA highlighted some of Malaysia’s achievements in the maritime sector. Today, Malaysia is ranked by UNCTAD as the 18^th most important nation in terms of its 1.2% contribution to the world’s merchant fleet in 2008. In addition to two world class container ports – Port Klang and Pelabuhan Tanjung Pelepas, Malaysia’s national carrier MISC is the world’s largest owner-operator of LNG tankers with a fleet of 27 vessels. The nation is also the world’s 13^th largest producer of natural gas and 24^th largest in crude oil production which explains the vibrancy of its domestic oil and gas sector.        Continue Reading

Nepline Ships Seized

Bank Pembangunan Malaysia (“Bank Pembangunan”) has appointed a receiver over three oil tankers of Nepline Group after the Malaysian shipowner failed to make payment on three debt facilities amounting to RM 44.8 million (USD 12.4 million). The receiver has seized control of a 1986-built, 2,751 dwt product tanker MT Damanara, the 1995-built, 6,902 dwt MT Nepline Mas and a 7,000 dwt product tanker newbuilding constructed at Zhejiang Shenzhou Shipbuilding which represent over half of Nepline’s fleet.  

Following a demand letter on the outstanding payments last September, the bank was unable to agree on the loan structuring proposal put forward by the shipowner which subsequently led to the termination of the credit facilities on 30 December 2008. Continue Reading