Capital Ship Management Corp. (‘Capital’) and Heidmar Inc announced last week the formation of a joint venture combining the long-standing commercial strength of the two organizations in the tanker industry.

Having successfully concluded the acquisition of two 2004-built 33,000 DWT stainless steel chemical tankers through Chem Tank Invest V AS, Tailwind Management AS together with Pareto Securities AS quickly spotted another opportunity in this sector, which matched their criteria for another successful project investment.

There are the Ten Commandments for mortals, which for public corporations, translate into a capital allocation framework. It is impossible for management of a public company to avoid a discussion of capital allocation and in particular the portion related to returning capital to shareholders.

These days, the word “shipbroker” is something in between a misnomer and an anachronism. Shipbrokers were once the province of maritime veterans nailing down vessel charter or sale and purchase deals in person (for example, at London’s Baltic Exchange, or Oslo’s Theatrecaféen), or on long distance phone calls supplemented by the latest and greatest communications medium. Now, shipbrokers have morphed into information gatherers sitting amidst financial deal-makers.

Faced with the nearly insurmountable challenge of achieving zero carbon emissions, the maritime industry continues to turn over every stone in this quest as it awaits the perfect fuel.

As a regular recipient of notifications from Scorpio Tankers and Eneti, we must confess that we were regularly intrigued by their reporting of Robert Bugbee’s trading activity in the shares of those companies.

As we put the final period in place on our preceding report on Seaspan Corporation’s innovative JOLCO transaction, the company proved us to be prophetic in our suggestion of a repeat performance by announcing on Wednesday a second ECA-JOLCO transaction to finance the last ten vessels thus completing the financing for its full 70 vessel newbuilding program.

If there was ever such a position as "ship finance historian," I would apply for the job.
For more than 20 years, I have been closely following the companies, deals, families, individual entrepreneurs, lenders, lawyers, brokers, and other creatures who have existed in the ship finance biome.

Teekay Corporation is returning to its roots as a tanker company as the sale of its daughter company, Teekay LNG Partners LP, to Stonepeak is expected to close this week leaving Teekay Tankers as its last daughter.

Last month, after much anticipation, Golar LNG announced the formation of Cool Company Ltd. (“CoolCo”) which will acquire eight of Golar’s TFDE LNG carriers. The company is also expected to acquire the commercial and technical organization associated with the operation of Golar’s owned and operated shipping and FSRU assets thus becoming a fully integrated operating platform.

By combining two traditional asset financing structures, Seaspan Corporation created an innovative new structure which added long dated and attractively priced debt to the company’s capital structure.

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