Freshly Minted – March 16, 2000

Correction:

Danaos Holdings Ltd

In the article published in the February edition of Marine Money it was stated that Danaos Holdings Ltd want to see strict but fair terms for the entry of ocean going shipping companies on the Athens Stock Exchange. It was misleadingly stated however that the company wanted these terms to be strict enough only “to permit the top 10 – 15 companies access to the ASE”. Danaos Holdings Ltd state that the terms should be strict enough to permit only the financially strong companies access to the exchange, of which there may be, in the opinion of Danaos, between 10 and 15 such companies. We should have been more clear and apologize for any misunderstanding.

HIGH YIELD

NAVIGATOR GAS

At the January 25th meeting, the management of Navigator Gas promised that it would provide bondholders with correspondence with the Trustees for the bonds including a legal opinion from Thacher Proffitt & Wood stating that the sale of Bjorn Aaeserod’s holding companies to the Artic Gas interests did not constitute a change of control under the Indenture Agreement. The tripping of such a change of control provision would most recently result in the bonds going into default as current equity interests would be unlikely to refinance all $304 million of the bonds at the change of control price of 101. After another frustrating month of silence, an unspecified number of bondholders took matters into their own hands and contacted the U.S. Trust Company, trustee for the First Priority Notes asking for the Trustee to further investigate the matter. The Trustee in turn contacted its legal counsel, Carter Ledyard & Milburn. Freshly Minted understands that Artic Gas interests flew to New York for a meeting with Carter Ledyard. Neither the context of the meeting or its results have been made public.

Although one would have thought that there was a well-developed body of case law on this subject, Freshly Minted would not be surprised to see Carter Ledyard rule in favor of the company. As always with Navigator nothing is ever clear cut. The only thing that we do know for sure is that the first vessel will not be delivered in the month of March. Against this backdrop it is worth noting that Greek-based gas tanker specialist, Naftomar is in discussions with Hyundai to built a 22,000 cbm LPG tanker for delivery in 2002 at a reported $32MM with an option for a second ship.

This is only an excerpt of Freshly Minted – March 16, 2000

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