Friday, January 30, 2009

Will Icelandic carrier Eimskip survive?

Back in October 2008 I wrote about Eimskip going belly up due to the financial problems of Iceland.

They are still in business, but even their auditor questions for how long.

Eimskip announced a loss of 648.4 million euros [$836 million] in the year to the end of October mainly due to asset writedowns and a loan guarantee for a failed airline.

Eimskip’s auditor KPMG said this casts significant doubt on “the company’s ability to continue as a going concern” as it may be unable to realize its assets and discharge its liabilities.


Because most of their international shipping business has involved refrigerated cargoes, they are not in as bad of shape as they would have been if their core business was in containers or bulk carriers.

Revenues rose 5.7 percent to 718.9 million euros [$927 million] from 680.3 million euros [$878 million] in the previous year, driven mainly by a big increase in shipping volume in the Baltic and new Asian operations


However, I think all this will do is allow some assets to be sold off, rather than just go bankrupt.

Maybe they can salvage something. Iceland needs transportation to and from their country, especially since all their unemployed bankers have gone back to fishing.

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