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American Shipping Company seeks refinancing of bonds

American Shipping Company said today it is exploring options to refinance an unsecured bond issue maturing in February 2018.

To help with the refinancing, the company has engaged Arctic Securities, Clarksons Platou Securities, Pareto Securities and SEB as its financial advisors.

The outstanding book value of the bonds is $212m and the major holder is Ocean Yield with around 93%.

Morten Bakke, CFO of American Shipping Company told Splash that the company is confident it can refinance the bonds. Bakke said it was more a matter of pricing rather than if the company can obtain refinancing, although he wasn’t able to provide details on the maturity date the company sought on any new arrangement.

American Shipping Company owns ten handysize tankers, all on long-term bareboat charter with Overseas Shipholding Group (OSG). OSG declared bankruptcy in 2012 and was revived in August 2014 with $1.51bn in funding from a consortium of 10 different private equity firms.

Grant Rowles

Grant spent nine years at Informa Group based in London, Sydney, Hong Kong and Singapore. He gained strong management experience in publishing, conferences and awards schemes in the shipping and legal areas, working on a number of titles including Lloyd's List. In 2009 Grant joined Seatrade responsible for the commercial development of Seatrade’s Asia products. In 2012, with Sam Chambers, he co-founded Asia Shipping Media.
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