Stitt, the Quiescent Lion. Image credit: Karatzas Images
by Basil M. Karatzas, CEO, Karatzas Marine Advisors & Co.
There used to be a time when the financing options for a shipowner where simple: seed capital was levered with a ship mortgage from a bank, and the loan was paid off based on an agreed-upon principal repayment profile from the operating profit. The terms of the shipping loans from banks were very similar and often the only differentiating factors for shipping loans were a few quantitative factors, principal among them the so-called spread, the difference over Libor for the cost of the debt.
Obviously, for any rational borrower, the lender with the lowest cost (interest rate) would get the business. When all things were equal, it was easy to note the sole differentiating factor, and push for the lowest number. Borrowers (shipowners) did not really have to create an “indifference curve”, their optimal set of choices. The leverage was in the 60-70% of FMV, the terms and covenants comparable, and thus the choices were limited. The “product” was one-dimensional and business was earned on the lowest spread.
Now that we live in times where by necessity there have been more types of capital than seed capital and traditional debt, such as alternative capital, mezz, senior and junior debt, etc, there is a greater opportunity to see the choices of preference for the shipowners.
