Seacurus Bulletin: Top Ten Maritime News Stories 08/06/2016
1. Class Must Stay True
As debated by the Motley Fool vs Zacks experts, classification societies should not become listed entities and be beholden to the whims of investors, the ceo of Lloyd’s Register (LR) has said. Alastair Marsh took over from Richard Sadler as the head of LR at the start of the year, having served as CFO for the previous eight years. Italian classification society RINA has recently made moves to IPO in the coming couple of years, while France’s Bureau Veritas is listed in Paris.
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2. Hanjin Head Rolls
Choi Eun-young, the former head of Hanjin Shipping, appeared before prosecutors in Seoul today, accused of insider trading. Choi, and her daughters, sold their stockholding in the Korean line days ahead of the company announcing a resturcuting, with prosectors convinced the sell off came from a tip off from sources within the shipping line. “I will fully cooperate with the investigation,” she told reporters before entering the prosecutor’s office.
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3. Dry Ship Shares Plunge
Shares of George Economou-led DryShips plunged yesterday after the Nasdaq-listed company revealed it had defaulted on three bank facilities and raised “substantial doubt” of its ability to carry on as a going concern. Having closed on Monday at $2.36, the shares opened trading on Tuesday at just $1.44 as investors desperately offloaded shares in the company. The decline continued throughout the day with shares closing at just $1.29 – down over 45%.
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4. Hyundai New Shares Issue
Embattled Korean line Hyundai Merchant Marine (HMM) plans to raise more than KRW2.5trn ($2.1bn) from a new share issuance in its latest restructuring move. HMM will issue 236m new shares on August 5 at KRW10,700 per share to pay maturing debts and secure operating capital. HMM is likely to reveal how its negotiations have gone with tonnage providers to reduce its charter costs as early as this week.
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5. Terrible Toll Rises
Some 320 migrants and refugees are now feared drowned off the Greek island of Crete last week as the deadliest toll on record so far in the Mediterranean keeps climbing, the International Organization for Migration said on Tuesday. The Greek coast guard said on Saturday the migrants who survived had told authorities their boat set sail from Egypt with about 350 people. On Friday, Greek authorities said 340 people were rescued after their boat sank.
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6. Worlds Largest Tanker Fleet
China COSCO Shipping Co, the country’s largest shipping company by fleet size, officially launched COSCO Shipping Energy Transportation Co in Shanghai, creating the world’s largest oil tanker fleet of both ship numbers and deadweight tonnage. With a total of 105 oil tankers, including 9 liquefied natural gas carriers and a deadweight tonnage of 17.04 million, the new company has the world’s biggest fleet of oil tankers and the largest transport capacity.
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7. BP Comes Clean
BP has agreed to pay $175 million to shareholders who brought a class-action lawsuit that accused the oil company of misleading them by understating the severity of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. However, the company said in a statement this settlement does not resolve other securities-related litigation in connection with the spill.
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8. Maersk In Scrap Battle
After the Danish shipping giant Maersk Group said it would scrap more vessels in the coming years, the company’s plan to avoid European environmental law on ship recycling by flagging ships to non-EU flags was described as “undermining its credibility as a responsible ship operator” by the environmental organisation Clean Shipping Coalition (CSC).
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9. CMA CGM Digs Deep
French container shipping company CMA CGM has launched an all-cash offer for all outstanding shares of Singapore-listed Neptune Orient Lines. The offer price is SGD 1.30 in cash per NOL share, which CMA CGM called a fair value and an offer that the company does not intend to increase. The offers comes after approval by regulatory authorities in the European Union and China.
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10. Thailand Signs Up to MLC
Thailand becomes the 77th member state to have ratified this Maritime Labour Convention, 2006 (MLC, 2006), which seeks to establish compliance and enforcement mechanism based on flag state inspection and certification of seafarers’ working and living conditions. The MLC, 2006 will enter into force for Thailand on June 7, 2017. More than 90 per cent of the world gross tonnage of ships is covered by the MLC, 2006.
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Daily news feed from Seacurus Ltd – providers of MLC crew insurance solutions www.seacurus.com
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S Jones
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