In Conversation with Dagfinn Lunde, DVB Bank

Marine Money talks to Mr. Dagfinn Lunde, Member of the Board of Managing Directors at DVB Bank in Singapore, and hears his views on China, the current developments in global ship finance and the bank’s lending policies. Here are some excerpts.

Marine Money: Do you think the worst is over for shipping?

Mr Lunde: I would say the worst is over. December 2009 was basically the deepest point and clearly the picture looks better today. The demand side in shipping is fine, but we are still concerned with the problem of oversupply, particularly the larger dry bulk ships. In general, most of the segments except container boxes are in oversupply. We have too much shipping capacity at the moment and the reality is that we have more than three times as much capacity in the shipbuilding industry than what is needed for vessel replacement at a normal level. That is a dramatic situation ahead of us. Continue Reading

Written by: rwong | Categories: Asia, Market Commentary | February 10th, 2011 | Add a Comment

In Conversation With DVB

CEO of DVB Bank, Mr Wolfgang Driese and Member of the Board of DVB Bank and Head of Shipping Division, Mr Dagfinn Lunde were in Singapore last month and we were very happy to have the opportunity to spend some time with the two affable gentlemen, who shared with us their take on the turmoil that the shipping industry has been through.

Mr Driese is credited with transforming DVB from an unknown generalist domestic German bank into a global player with a specialisation in international transport finance, staying true to its name Deutsche VerkehrsBank AG. Mr Lunde carried out a successful reorganisation of DVB’s shipping division in January 2008, and “sectorised” the previous regional sales team into ten groups focusing on key shipping sectors: Container Box Group, Cruise & Ferry Group, Crude Oil & LNG Tanker Group, Chemical & LPG Tanker Group, Container Vessel Group, Dry Bulk Group, Floating Production Group, Offshore Drilling Group, Offshore Support Group and Product Tanker Group. Ship financing now makes up a substantial chunk of 54.2% in DVB’s lending portfolio, with a total value of USD 13.88 billion as at 30 September 2009. Continue Reading

Written by: carisk | Categories: Asia, Company Profile | February 26th, 2010 | Add a Comment

Finance for Asian Shipping

The availability of ship financing and alternative sources of capital was the central theme revolving Sea-Asia’s conference yesterday. Referring to a slide that illustrates the impact of banks writedowns on their market capitalisations (see below), Dagfinn Lunde, Member of the Board of Managing Directors of DVB Bank SE, pointed out that even though the traditional ship financing landscape has changed dramatically, there is still money available from banks. He told the crowd that DVB, DnB NOR, Nordea, Nord LB, Fortis and some Greek banks are open to different extents and it is possible to put together club deals between USD 100 million to 120 million today. “If you have the words ‘energy’ or ‘offshore’ in your project, even some US banks are still willing to lend,” he added. Continue Reading

Written by: carisk | Categories: Asia, Commentary, Conferences | April 23rd, 2009 | Add a Comment

Bigger, Better… Forever

We don’t know how they do it, but this year’s CMA’s shipping and trade conference and exposition, “Shipping 2009”, was not only the biggest ever but showed the resilience of the industry. The ladies of CMA, who run the conference like a well-oiled machine, tell us attendance exceeded 2,200. If sports arenas are named after corporations, it seems only fair that the Hilton be renamed the CMA during this annual event.

The success of this event is attributable to the fact that it reaches out to the whole industry and covers all of the issues it faces. This year the shipping markets and piracy got equal billing. While, naturally, our main focus is on the shipping markets, Professor Christopher Coker’s presentation on piracy highlighted its significance, permanence and far-reaching risks, if it becomes linked with terrorism. For us, the rude awakening was his statement that unlike the 19th century when piracy was eradicated, today the best we can hope for is to “manage risks.” And, if we are unsuccessful even in that, we will have far more serious issues. The speech is a must read for its realistic but unfortunately bleak perspective of our future.

From the extensive three day program our chairman puts together with the assistance of the CMA, we have selected the following as perhaps being of the greatest interest to our readers.

Written by: carisk | Categories: Freshly Minted, Market Commentary | March 26th, 2009 | Add a Comment

DVB Celebrates – Planes, Trains and Ships Turn Out

DVB sure throws a great party. The gang turned out in force to celebrate DVB’s five years of success in NYC. Wolfgang Driese, Chairman of the Board of DVB Bank, who knows how to give a good speech to a networking crowd, led the team from DVB, which also included Dagfinn Lunde, Sybren Hoekstra and Mr. Hoekstra’s NY team which just grows and grows. A crowd of owners and professionals did business and toasted DVB as the sun set outside the Sky Club atop the Met Life building. In attendance were Mike Hudner, the new treasurer of Crowley – Dan Warner, Ted Helms with Petrobras, Richard du Moulin and Mark Filanowski of Intrepid, Gary Vogel from VOC, Sean Durkin and Øivind Lorentzen with NFC, Seaspan’s Graham Porter, James Drakos of Groton Pacific, CIT’s Steve Serepca, Derick Betts, and Larry Rutkowski from Seward and Kissel, Poten and Partners out in numbers, Helaba’s Gerhard Winklmeier and a hundred others…congratulations.

Written by: carisk | Categories: Freshly Minted, The Week in Review | May 5th, 2005 | Add a Comment