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Old Faces, New Places
Nick Davies, formerly of Jefferies, has accepted a position working for Michel Bourgery at DVB Bank in its capital markets business.
Dahlman Rose announced the appointment of Elliot Etheredge as Managing Director and head of the firm’s Marine Transportation Investment Banking group. Previously, Mr. Etheredge was at JPMorgan.
Few Surprises But Nonetheless Interesting
A quarter, particularly the first one, does not make a year, but according to the first quarter Dealogic tables, which we received today, the axis of the ship financial world has tipped eastward. Looking at the Top 20 Bookrunner Table of which there are only eight, Asian banks populate four of the places including the three top spots, which are held by SMBC and SBI Capital Markets (State Bank of India), and Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (“Misubishi UFJ”) respectively. In the case of the Top 20 MLA Table, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group and HSBC took the top two spots and three other Asian banks populate the top 20. Total volume for the quarter was $10.6 billion, continuing the downward trend since 2007. However for those who see a glass as half full this quarters volume is in line with the comparable periods in 2005 and 2006. Is it too early to say we are reverting to the norm?
Hellenic Norwegian Confab
For the fifteenth year, the Hellenic-American and Norwegian-American Chambers of Commerce presented their Annual Joint Shipping Conference posing the question of “How Will Shipping Survive the Perfect Storm?” Whether the question was answered or not, attendees were able to garner lots of insights into what happened and what may happen in the future. Once again, the following will highlight what we found of particular interest.
Arlie Sterling of Marsoft provided insights into “what happened” and “what might happen.” The industry did well based upon an explosion in trade and demand and yard capacity limits. The chart below lays out the extraordinary growth.
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Pick Your Poison
Last week, we discussed in some depth Dahlman Rose’s new dry and wet shipping indices composed of the bulk of the shares trading on the New York exchanges. In these turbulent times, we frankly prefer the diversification as well as a hand on the wheel that these products offer.
Nevertheless, for those who want a more pure play and are not adverse to roller coaster rides, Imarex presented their new Baltic Exchange Dry Index (“BDI”) Futures product at the JPMorgan Shipping Futures Teach-in last week. Investors, today, can invest in dry bulk shares, trade FFAs or trade commodity related ETFs to play in the commodity growth story. Imarex envisions the BDIFutures as a complementary tool. BDIFutures is an index futures contract based upon the BDI and can be traded on direction, as a hedge against dry bulk equities or as a spread against FFAs.
That Was The Week That Was
Marine Money’s flagship conference came to New York this week and if you were a kid you might refer to it as a three- ring circus. With the conference as the centerpiece, the week has become filled not only with the usual owner/banker meetings but formal presentations and the usual bevy of social events. The numbers are astounding with over 1,000 delegates registered this year, exceeding by far all previous years. In fact, as quickly as we printed a copy of the delegate list, we found it to be obsolete.
The Wall Street Journal’s Shipping Analysts Of the Year
For a Wall Street analyst the annual Wall Street Journal Best on the Street rankings is like an AcademyAward, only worth more, certainlyto those investors who bought basis the winning analysts picks.
This year Scott Burk at JPMorgan, but Bear Stearns when his picks were made (JPM acquired Bear Stearns in a sub-prime fire sale last March) came out number one in the Industrial Transportation classification. Doug Mavrinac of Jefferies & Co came in second and Omar Nokta with Dahlman Rose grabbed the third spot.
TMI?
What a week for investors! Starting with CMA’s annual event, continuing with JPMorgan’s Conference and concluding with the Capital Link Forum, it is conceivable that even the most interested observer of the industry may have suffered from information overload. Thankfully, with Good Friday, many of us had the opportunity to recover with a long-weekend.
Despite the early start, the Capital Link Forum played to a full house. There were company presentations galore interspersed with lively and informative panel discussions. With far too much information to distill, here is a highly selected compendium of our outtakes.
The Official Guide To Marine Finance Providers
Shipping Index
