A Noble Breed

Last week, our sister publication Freshly Minted reported on Maersk’s successful EUR 750 million (USD 1.3 billion) five-year bond. This was the shipping conglomerate’s first bond issuance, following a recent equity offering of USD 1.7 billion. In Asia, commodity trading house Noble Group has likewise found tremendous success in raising funds, suggesting that investors and bankers are getting warmed up to investing cash again. Continue Reading

Written by: carisk | Categories: Asia, Bank Debt | November 5th, 2009 | Add a Comment

The China Story Continues

Trying to get a sense of how huge the ship finance market in China has always been a daunting challenge for us. The domestic banks are highly competitive and remain guarded when it comes to disclosing their ship finance transactions. In our quest to make the market more transparent, we are very pleased to make some progress. This year, for the very first time in history, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (“ICBC”) shared with us the size of their shipping portfolio in our annual bank debt survey. And likewise, for the very first time in Singapore, we are very grateful to Ms Helen Zeng, Senior Relationship Manager from Bank of China (“BOC”) for taking time off her busy work schedule in Beijing to share with us her views on the Chinese market at our conference. Continue Reading