The Year of the Lease (Yes, Again)

In late 2005, we proclaimed that 2006 was going to be “The Year of the Lease” and, although it is not in our institutional character to be self-congratulatory, we will indulge ourselves a little and say two words – BINGO BABY!!!

Who would have thought vessel leasing would ever be so fascinating? But it is. What began in 2003 as a way for opportunistic shipowners to extract maximum valuation from yield-starved investors has ended up transforming leasing from an irrelevant conference topic into probably the most interesting method to isolate and price different layers of risk in the capital structure of a vessel.

As we sifted through all of the issues of Freshly Minted that we produced during 2006, trying to refresh our memories so we could write this annual Awards issue, we were startled to find that we actually wrote more about vessel leasing during 2006 than we did any other capital market structure, including commercial bank debt which comprises about 80% of the $100 billion of capital that is formed for shipping related deals annually. The landscape of leasing deals was so expansive this year thatit was almost impossible to pick a single winner. While we do, and we want to heartily congratulate our winner, we only name them at the end because we believe that those transactions you must read about before getting to our winner deserve up front mention as well.

This is only an excerpt of The Year of the Lease (Yes, Again)

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