As a means to strengthen its balance sheet, Ocean Yield announced last week that it had entered into a joint venture ("JV") with an affiliated company, Aker Capital AS ("Aker") whereby Aker will acquire from Ocean Yield a 50% interest in seven tankers with long-term charters.

The good news as you can see from this and previous issues is that owners are working feverishly to bolster their balance sheets and raise liquidity given the uncertain future.

Marine Money's monthly "Ship Finance Market Conditions" survey of the world's top 40 shipping Banks
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Over ten years ago now, the global financial crisis hit the shipping sector particularly hard, beginning in 2008. The financial crisis produced a slowdown in overall world economic activity and trade, causing vessel earnings to fall precipitously in many cases as a result. At the same time, problems within the global banking sector, where the crisis originated, severely constrained the availability of vessel financing sources.

Last week, Genco Shipping & Trading Limited entered into an Amendment and Restatement Agreement ("Amendment") to its $108,000,000 senior secured credit agreement ("Credit Agreement") with Crédit Agricole CIB, as Structurer, Bookrunner and Mandated Lead Arranger, and Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken as Mandated Lead Arranger.

A year cannot or should not go by without a Marine Money Week. This year out of necessity, we went virtual.

Of all the responsibilities corporate management is tasked with, training and succession planning, although largely unheralded, are critical to the life of a corporation. A smooth transition is a thing of beauty. The re-arrangement of the deck chairs atCiti's Shipping & Logistics Businesswas one of those occurrences.

The last few years have seen a rapid growth in the secondary market for maritime debt – not just in terms of the volume of deals being done, but also as to the innovation in the structures implemented when conducting such transactions. Whilst the large-scale portfolio transfers naturally attract more attention in the press, the number of individual trades (being single, two or three asset positions) is not insignificant.

Over the past few months, Team Tankers International Ltd. entered into a series of strategic transactions which transferred the commercial management of the bulk of its fleet and the entire technical management of the fleet from in-house to third party providers.

There is much in this issue that we take pleasure in, but one of our favorite activities is in proverbially panning for gold. Category winners are typically obvious, and receive many accolades, but there are other transactions which fall between the cracks. These may not fit into a category, as the accomplishment itself is not easily recognized, or perhaps they simply...

The January 2018 edition of Marine Money included the article "Technical and Operational Issues for Bankers to Consider". This article, however, addresses the view from the other direction: financial issues for consideration for non-management and management colleagues who work in technical and operational roles.

The rise of sale and leaseback structures as an alternative financing tool for shipowners over the last decade is well documented in the market. In this article, we briefly consider some of the key drivers behind choosing a sale and leaseback, and whether this trend is likely to continue.