Nov 30 (Reuters) - DryShips Inc (DRYS.O) said it has terminated an agreement to buy two Panamax vessels as it could not get a period employment contract for the vessels within the agreed timeframe with the sellers.
On 29 November a Greek Crude Oil Tanker named the M/V Maran Centaurus was hijacked in the Somali Bassin, 600 nautical miles North East of the Seychelles. Maran Centaurus has a deadweight of 300,294 tonnes and a crew of 28, among them 9 Greek, 16 Filipinos, 2 Ukrainian and 1 Romanian. The vessel was heading for New Orleans from Jiddah and has now altered course West towards Harardheere or Hobyo.
Zim troubles drag Israel Corp. down to loss
Zim's revenue sank nearly 50% to $596 million.
Hillel Koren26 Nov 09 10:07
Israel's largest holding company, Israel Corp. (TASE: ILCO) reported a third quarter net loss of $11 million, compared with profit of $253 million in the corresponding quarter of 2008. The company released its third quarter financial results this morning.
The company's troubled shipping unit, Zim Integrated Shipping Services Ltd., reported a loss attributable to Israel Corp. shareholders of $208 million, compared with a loss of $61 million in the corresponding quarter. Expectations were for Zim's loss to reach $120 million.
Zim’s loss helped push parent Israel Corp. into an $11 million third quarter net loss from a year-earlier profit of $253 million.
Israel Corp. shareholders narrowly voted earlier this month for a $450 million capital injection for Zim as well as a $100 million “safety net” as part of a recovery plan for the world’s 17th-largest carrier.
The troubled carrier, which faces a cash flow deficit of $1 billion over the next four years, also will receive more than $500 million in new financing from its banks in 2009-10 to finance the purchase of ships repayable over more than 10 years.
Zim has cut charter payments to ship owners, returned leased ships, trimmed its work force, closed unprofitable services, joined forces with rivals on some routes, and delayed deliveries of new ships as part of the recovery program.
CMA CGM Chairman Jacques Saade said last week he wants outside investors to inject $300 million to $400 million into the carrier and hold stakes for five to seven years. Saade said the company faces a cash crunch because it must find $1.2 billion in upfront payments for container ships it ordered in Asia.
CMA CGM, which began talks with its banks and the French finance ministry in late September, said it expects to reach agreement by mid-December, a month later than originally planned.
Two German container shipowners that had previously requested aid from the German state have withdrawn their applications, the Financial Times reported Tuesday.
Jochen Dohle, president of Peter Dohle Schiffahrt, told the Financial Times it had withdrawn its application last week. Another owner, Claus-Peter Offen, had previously announced it no longer planned to rely on state support.
.............
Dohle told the Financial Times it had withdrawn its application after receiving “numerous questions” from officials scrutinizing the request. Dohle confirmed on Oct. 22 that it was seeking help from the German government’s Deutschlandsfonds, for companies hit by the economic crisis, to finance its orders for new ships.
“We’ve simply said: ‘We leave it and we wait until the overall political situation can clarify whether help for shipping is granted or not,’” Dohle said.
Hapag-Lloyd is on track for a further loss in 2010, ....
"I don't expect a profit at Hapag next year either," German logistics billionaire Klaus-Michael Kuehne told the German weekly Welt am Sonntag newspaper.
"However, I think the worst is behind us," said Kuehne the biggest investor in the Albert Ballin consortium, which owns a majority stake in the Hamburg-based liner company.
He said that transport volumes and freight rates were rising, while cost-cutting had also benefited the company, Germany's biggest carrier.
"It is astounding all the things you can save money on," the 72-year-old entrepreneur said, adding that he would not expect to receive a dividend from Hapag for years.
Linda...your post further distributes a mistaken press report as to Global Ship Lease earnings in the current quarter.
GSL did not have a LOSS in the recent quarter. GSL generated actual cash after expenses of $15.4 million in the quarter. As a semantic matter of GAAP accounting, GSL also booked a non-cash loss on interest rate swaps which was larger than the cash generated.
I shake my head reading your blog today.
Of the three publicly traded long term charter companies that offer containerships - Seaspan, Danaos and Global Ship Lease - GSL is the only one with essentially zero financial exposure to future ship orders.
GSL's total orderbook consists of the two ships you mentioned, both ordered to fulfill an existing long term charter with Zim. If GSL chooses to do so, it is free to refuse delivery of those ships and simply forfeit a relatively small deposit ($15 million) as the only consequence. In all likelihood Zim will ask GSL to to exactly that - gladly reimbursing GSL for the forfeiture rather than honoring the charter expense and losing even more money.
................
To my view, GSL's lack of orderbook risk going forward opens the possibility that GSL may partner with one or more shipowner banks in to take on and stretch out delivery of ships ordered by CMA, Zim and possibly others. Indeed, this very crisis may result in GSL's becoming the dominant player in long term containership charter.
November 21, 2009 2:12 PM
Global Ship Lease, a containership charter owner listed on the New York Stock Exchange, posted a net loss of $3.9 million in the third quarter ended Sept. 30, which was more than triple its loss of $1.2 million in the same quarter a year earlier.
The company’s revenue increased by 57 percent to $37.6 million from $23.9 million a year ago, due to the purchase of four additional vessels in December 2008 and one additional vessel in August 2009.
The company said it earned a normalized net profit of $6.2 million in the quarter, excluding an $8.1 million non-cash interest rate derivative mark-to-market charge and $2 million deferred financing costs written off on an accelerated basis. Normalized net earnings are not defined by accounting principles generally accepted in the United States.
The company said it was able to borrow sufficient funds under the credit facility to allow the purchase for $82 million in August of the CMA CGM Berlioz, a 2001-built container vessel with 6,627 20-foot equivalent unit capacity chartered to CMA CGM for 12 years.
With that purchase, Global Ship Lease owns 17 container ships that are all on fixed long-term charters with CMA CGM, with an average remaining term of 9.3 years.
The company, which is domiciled in the Marshall Islands, started as a time charter operator in December 2007 when it purchased 10 container vessels from CMA CGM that it leased back to the French liner company.
Global Ship Lease said its has contracts in place to purchase two new 4,250-TEU ships from German interests for approximately $77 million each that are scheduled to be delivered in the fourth quarter of 2010. It said it has agreements to charter out these new ships to Zim Integrated Shipping Services for periods of seven to eight years.
LONDON — Seaborne raiders in a high-speed skiff tried again on Wednesday to commandeer the Maersk Alabama, the American-flagged ship seized by pirates in April, the United States Navy said.
The United States Navy Central Command said four suspected pirates in a skiff came within 300 yards of the Maersk Alabama at 6.30 a.m. Wednesday about 600 miles off the northeast coast of Somalia as it headed for the Kenyan port of Mombasa.
But a security team on board the Maersk Alabama responded with small-arms fire, long-range acoustical devices painful to the human ear and evasive maneuvers to thwart the attack, the Navy said in a statement.
“Due to Maersk Alabama following maritime industry’s best practices such as embarking security teams, the ship was able to prevent being successfully attacked by pirates,” said Vice Adm. Bill Gortney, the commander of the Central Command. “This is a great example of how merchant mariners can take pro-active action to prevent being attacked.”
No injuries or damage were reported, the Navy said.
In a separate episode, the captain of a hijacked chemical tanker was reported to have died of gunshot wounds inflicted when pirates seized the MV Theresa with 28 North Korean crew members northwest of the Seychelles on Monday. The spate of attacks reflected the increasing boldness of pirates roaming far from their bases in Somalia to seize vessels and sailors to hold for ransom.
Somali pirates have released a Spanish trawler and its crew after holding it for six weeks, Spain's prime minister has confirmed.
Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero said the pirates had abandoned the Alakrana tuna boat and that all 36 crew on board were "safe and sound".
The pirates earlier told reporters they were leaving the ship after being promised a ransom of $3.5m (£2.1m).
• Pirates seized the MV Theresa VIII, a chemical tanker with a crew of 28 North Koreans in waters off Somalia on Monday, Navfor said
• Navfor guards aboard a Ukrainian cargo ship, the MV Lady Juliet, successfully fought off pirates in the Gulf of Aden, also on Monday
After many months of careful development work and consultation BIMCO has published three new Piracy Clauses. The suite of clauses consist of a revision of the Piracy Clause for Time Charter Parties, first issued in March 2009, plus two newly developed Piracy Clauses – one for single voyage charter parties and one for consecutive voyage charter parties and contracts of affreightment. The Time Charter Party version of the Piracy Clause has been revised in response to industry comments that the responsibilities and liabilities of the parties in the event of the seizure of the vessel by pirates were perceived as being imbalanced. The two new Clauses provide contractual solutions for short term spot fixtures where the cost and risk remain with the owners, and also for longer term consecutive voyages and COAs where risk and cost is shared between the owners and the charterers.
From The New York Times
Recession Over in Euro Zone, Report Says
By MATTHEW SALTMARSH
Published: November 13, 2009
PARIS — After more than a year in the doldrums, the euro area emerged from recession during the third quarter, helped largely by export growth and improved industrial production in Germany.
The European Union’s statistics agency, Eurostat, reported Friday that gross domestic product for the 16 countries using the euro expanded by 0.4 percent from the second quarter, after five quarters of contraction. G.D.P. was still 4.1 percent lower than it was a year earlier.
The Story of Boeing and Its People Legend & Legacy
On page 334, Boeing found itself over $1 BILLION in debt in 1970 as a result of cost overruns on production of airplanes, and reduced airplane orders. Boeing went to its lenders to try to get more money and was turned down.
Here is what Boeing did.
1. It laid off 5,000 people in single week.
2. engineers and scientists were reduced from 15,000 to 8,000
3. office employees were reduced from 24,000 to 9,000
4. hourly workers went from 45,000 to 15,000
5. management was reduced from 12,700 to 5,400
6. surviving officers had their salaries reduced by as much as 25 percent
Boeing's total payroll had shrunk from 101,000 to 38,000 in the Seattle area alone.
