Current State of the Marine Finance Market

By Ronny Bjørnådal, Head of Syndications, Nordea Bank

Editor’s Note: In 2004, Nordea was the largest arranger of syndicated loans to the maritime finance industry with a global volume of approximately $15.7 billion in financings compared with $9.7 billion in 2003. Nordea was instrumental in lead arranging very large transactions for the market leaders in this industry as well as to smaller and medium sized companies. The material in this article is taken from a speech given by Mr. Bjørnådal at Marine Money Week on June 16 at the Waldorf=Astoria in New York.

In order to provide you with a perspective on the prospects for shipping lenders and borrowers going forward, I would like to take a look at the current state of the marine finance market, provide you with some statistical data, analyze how we see the current market trends and let you in on how we see the outlook for marine finance going forward.

It has been great to be a ship owner recently! We have been witnessing an historic shipping rally in more or less all shipping segments over the last 12-18 months. If we look at the macro picture, we have seen a global economic recovery accompanied by better sentiment for industrial production, historically low interest levels, exceptional growth in Chinese GDP and a positive economic outlook.

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