Hellenic Ship Finances Look Up

The overall Greek loans of Hellenic maritime companies and ship owners (drawn and committed but undrawn) rose to $64.019 billion by the end of 2014, 4.1% higher than the $61.498 billion of 2013.

Petrofin Research in its latest annual research says that drawn loans are up by 2.85% and Commitments by 18.11%, the latter prompted by the high Greek newbuilding orders.

Of the 5 Greek banks active in the shipping finance market, National Bank of Greece shows an increase by 7.33% and Aegean Baltic by 11.99%. The rest show minor decreases.

Overall, Greek banks’ exposure is up by 3.17% to a total of $10,8 billion, reflecting the increased stability in 2014 for Greek banks. This increase is the first sign of a recovery, since 2008.

Now that the dust form mergers and acquisitions has subsided, the Greek banks are showing a slight rise in their portfolio, which is quite admirable in the current banking climate of Greece.

Among Greek banks, Piraeus Bank ranked in third place of the total shipping portfolios with loans of $3.85 billion, followed in fourth place by the National Bank of Greece, which controls a shipping loan portfolio of $2.933 billion.

Alpha Bank ranked in 8th place overall with a portfolio of $2.42 billion, while Eurobank took fourth place among Greek banks and 20th overall with a portfolio of $1.315 billion. Finally, Aegean Baltic took 30th place overall with a loan portfolio of $201 million.

The banking ship finance market shall continue to be restrained in the years to come and Greek ship lending is not expected to rise in line with the development of the Greek fleet and the level of newbuilding deliveries, as owners shall increasingly rely on non-banking sources of finance, as well as their own resources, to meet the industry’s challenges.