Friday, May 08, 2009
HCI Capital and Peter Döhle launch new fund
Patrick Hagen, Hamburg - Thursday 7 May 2009
GERMAN KG finance house HCI Capital plans to launch a fund in cooperation with shipowner Peter Döhle in an effort to cash in on rock-bottom vessel prices.
The company told Lloyd’s List that it would launch a new fund to focus on opportunity-driven investments. The HCI Shipping Opportunity fund will buy vessels at low prices and sell them later at a profit.
Under the cooperation agreement, Peter Döhle will be responsible for the acquisition. HCI will collect the equity.
The fund is aimed at private investors but will be open to institutional investors as well. “We are already in talks with institutional investors,” an HCI spokesman said.
The vessels will be managed by Hammonia Reederei, a joint venture between Döhle and HCI.
“We believe that there will be individual opportunities but that there will be not that many good opportunities,” the spokesman said.
It would be important to choose the right vessels, he added.
“We are sure that we have an advantage over other opportunity-driven financing schemes as we have experienced shipmanagers alongside,” he added. “HCI as well as Hammonia have successfully sold vessels in the past.”
The period between buying and selling vessels would depend on the individual case.
The fund is due to be launched during the third quarter of 2009. It will start with an initial volume of €20m ($26.8m), which may be increased at a later date. It is not limited to particular ship types.
Meanwhile, HCI said it had also succeeded in achieving delays and cancellations in talks with shipyards.
“We have successfully negotiated delays and cancellations for a range of vessels,” said HCI chief executive Ralf Friedrichs. “But it is too early to give further details.” The company is under pressure to achieve agreements with shipyards to delay or even cancel orders as it has a huge pipeline of some 80 vessels to be delivered by the end of 2012.
The delays and cancellations were mainly reached in talks with Chinese yards. “In Korea, the situation is much more difficult,” Mr Friedrichs said.
This was due to the hedging strategies used by Korean yards, which would result in major losses for the Koreans if they agreed to cancel orders.
Mr Friedrichs said that the KG fund scheme would remain an important financing scheme for the transport industry.
“Equity will have an even higher value compared to the situation before the crisis,” he said.
Mr Friedrichs said that HCI was also considering applying for funds from the government’s economy stimulus package provided by state-owned KfW bank although the exact terms for such a move had not been set to date.
HCI would have to apply through a bank, since a direct application is not possible. The bank would have to assume a minor part of the credit risks, while Germany and the federal states may assume up to 90% of the credit risks.
In the meantime, it has emerged that the city state of Hamburg is supporting local shipowners in their talks with banks and shipyards. A senior member of Hamburg’s state government said that although it was far more difficult to reach agreements with Korean yards than with the Chinese ones, it was still possible.
“You are not going to find anyone coming back from Korea saying that they managed to cancel an order”, he said. “But it is happening anyway.”
Korean yards were very strict about confidentiality agreements in these cases, he added.
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