Deal of The Year – 2002 PUBLIC EQUITY

By comparison to 2001 when there were some high profile tanker listings in New York and some very public de-listings in Asia, 2002 felt like a quiet time in public equity in shipping. This was certainly not the case. There were significant share buybacks, IPOs, and de-listings/privatizations throughout the year.

The carnage in the overall markets seems to have caused this general image of inactivity, everyone seemed scared to even look. Indeed shipping had one of the greatest embarrassments with the forcible de-listing of ACLN – which was deeply embattled in December 2001 and was the first forcible de-listing in nearly 30 years from the NYSE in 2002 – and the subsequent and ongoing fraud suit brought by the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Fortunately the “biggest black eye” of shipping for 2002 is not an award, but if it was, ACLN would be it.

But it was not all bad. Indeed most shipping shares outperformed many major indexes including the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq composite. In fact, while the Dow 30 was relatively resilient this year, little shipping – with its largely illiquid small cap shares (which appeared to be an asset this year) – performed as well or better than the index. Share-wise on pure value, an investment in a shipping share this year was about as reliable as investing in a Dow 30 company. Wow.

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