Have Dot, Will Travel

Frontline has recently taken a major stake in one. Some people claim that charterers will prefer theirs. One shipowner used one to bail out of a company that was about to take on water. The children of shipowners are interested in them, but preferably with other people’s money. Investment bankers see them as a new way to generate fees and lawyers will benefit from them irrespective of what happens. AMA is representing several. Commercial bankers both love them and hate them and Tufton plans to invest in one because they believe the timing is right. Shipowners who haven’t done one feel like they’re missing the last chance at free money. Most haven’t made any money for their investors.

Déjà vu? No, we’re not talking about high yield, but today’s rush to the internet market has charged the air in the ship finance community in a manner and scale that dwarfs the high yield buzz of 1997. Unlike high yield, which reinforced the industry’s reputation as secretive and self-serving and further alienated it from institutional investors, the internet has to date done, and promises to do, just the opposite.

This is only an excerpt of Have Dot, Will Travel

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