No Surprises This Quarter Either

On Wednesday, Dealogic released its Bookrunner and MLA Tables for Syndicated Shipping Loans for the 9 months 2009. As expected, total volume and transactions were well down from the prior year. Total deal volume was $25.6 billion in 85 transactions compared to $72.2 billion in 263 transactions over the same period in 2008, confirming what we hear anecdotally. In percentage terms, the nine-month decline was 64.5%, which was less than the quarter over quarter reduction of 73.9% suggesting relief is not yet in sight.

Looking at the changes in the tables from the first half of the year, there was movement in the bookrunner table (figure 1) as Mitsubishi UFJ jumped from 8th place to 1st on the strength of two NYK deals booked at the end of September. This pushed SMBC into 2nd place. In a similar fashion, ING moved from 9th to 3rd on the back of the Bluewater transaction, while BofA Merrill Lynch, which was not even in the top 20 came out of nowhere to finish in 9th place based upon the Tidewater transaction. DnB NOR and Mizuho rounded out the top five finishers. The data is particularly striking in that 9 banks made the top 20 having done only a single transaction.