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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 leading, New York-based maritime and offshore merchant bank, AMA Capital Partners, has hired Nick Smith to increase the firm's depth in the European market. As a London-based European Managing Agent, Nick will help bolster AMA's ability to provide on-the-ground support to their client base, while pursuing new opportunities.

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.

As the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic reverberates across the globe, parties' ability to perform their contractual obligations continues to be put under strain. In light of this, can COVID-19 constitute a force majeure event that allows parties to defer or cancel their contractual obligations?

Awilco LNG ("ALNG") is a fully integrated pure play LNG transportation provider, which owns and operates the WilForce and WilPride, two 156,000 cbm TFDE membrane LNG vessels built in Korea in 2013. According to VesselsValue, the two vessels are currently worth $255 million en bloc.

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.

On Wednesday, Frontline Ltd. announced it had entered into an Equity Distribution Agreement dated June 3, 2020, with Morgan Stanley, as its sales agent, for the offer and sale of up to $100.0 million of its common shares.

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.

This article focuses on some issues arising under ship finance documents – and more generally the relationship between shipowners and their financiers – since the onset of Covid-19 (we do not address issues arising under shipbuilding contracts, which is a subject in its own right). At the risk of stating the obvious, Covid-19 has its most direct and immediate effect on crewing and operational matters, which in turn have an impact on safety and regulatory issues.

Since 2011, Nord/LB's shipping loan portfolio has been massively reduced by a total of more than €15bn, corresponding to a reduction of almost 1,400 financed ships.

There are no limits to the ingenuity of borrowers to strengthen their balance sheets and improve liquidity. Actions can be large or small, but each step taken is an improvement. There is a consistency of purpose that we have never seen before, which bodes well for the industry as a whole. This week there was lots of action in the derivatives market.

These days everyone talks about strengthening the balance sheet and deleveraging. Teekay takes it to heart. The Q1 2020 Earnings Presentation for Teekay Tankers is a case study demonstrating the successful implementation of its strategy while making the most of the recent tanker boom.

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.

The Poseidon Principles were created to encourage energy efficiency; whether the business case exists will depend on their wider uptake by ship-finance players, says James Frew, Maritime Strategies International

There are benefits to simplification. This week, Diana Shipping Inc. announced that it had signed a term loan facility with ABN AMRO Bank, through six wholly-owned subsidiaries, in the amount of $52.885 million, divided into two tranches.

On Tuesday night, Scorpio Bulkers Inc. ("SALT") announced that it had successfully priced its underwritten public offering of 4.1 million shares of its common stock at $18.46 per share raising gross proceeds of $75,686,000. In addition, the company granted the underwriters a 30-day option to purchase up to an additional 615,000 common shares.

All things considered this cannot be a great time to arrange financing for LNG carriers. Freight rates are adversely affected by COVID-19, and cargoes are being cancelled due to a lack of demand. But this is John Fredriksen's backed Flex LNG led by a team that loves a challenge.

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.

In today's new lexicon, B.C. may come to mean "Before Covid," with March 16, 2020 defining that moment here in the US, as social distancing rules went into effect on that day. As we write this introduction, it has been 11 long weeks since we have withdrawn from society, and the period before Covid has become a distant memory. Since the pandemic struck, too many lives have been lost, and the world's economies have collapsed. When facing an unknown future, is anything that preceded it of any consequence? Yet it would be disingenuous for us to ignore what went before. There is no doubt that this will be a chapter in history textbooks — and a significant one — but it will still only be a chapter.

In its latest 10-K report, Star Bulk Carriers disclosed that it has eight lease and ten separate bank facilities, which finance its fleet of 116 vessels. In these difficult times, one's debt is an asset if carefully managed.