Deal of the year – 2002 Private Equity

The shipping industry is constantly bemoaning that there isn’t an adequate supply of private equity – but the reality is whenever we see decent deals emerge that have economics that can support equity returns, whether by purchasing real business franchises or making opportunistic asset plays, and if good management is there and personally invested, so is third party equity. So our sense is that there isn’t less equity available, there is less “dumb equity” available.

For this award we considered infusions of third party equity into operating companies, the equity portion of sale/leaseback transactions, as well as speculative bulk shipping investments. We included equity investments that are both realized and unrealized.

The Marine Money Private Equity Deal of 2002 Award goes to Fortis and Royal Bank of Canada for the work they did for Seabulk. Although this deal could have fit into various interrelated categories including; bank loan, balance sheetrestructuring/recapitalization and the infusion of substantially all the company’s equity, we decided to consider it in the area of private equity because that is the component of the transaction that impressed us the most.

This is only an excerpt of Deal of the year – 2002 Private Equity

Content is restricted to subscribers. To continue reading please Log-In or view our subscription options.