As HSH Nordbank gears up to make a renewed foray into shipping under new ownership, another big name in German ship finance is making moves of its own.
Reuters is reporting Deutsche Bank has agreed to sell a non-performing ship loan portfolio with a notional value of $1bn to investors Oak Hill Advisors and Varde.
The bank, which appointed Christian Sewing as its new CEO two months ago, is now ready to start increasing its shipping exposure once again after offloading most of its non-performing loans.
Meanwhile, in Italy, Splash understands Italian line Finaval will soon close its debt restructuring with its banks, but is also being forced to sell three ships by Deutsche Bank since the German lender did not agree with the plan proposed by the company controlled by Giovanni Fagioli.
Deutsche Bank bought the non-performing-loans linked to the three tankers in question from Commerzbank and Unicredit in the last two years.
The ships set to be dismissed are the two MR tankers Isola Corallo and Isola Blu and the aframax Neverland Angel (pictured), which are worth today respectively $17.2m, $16.8m and $21.1m, according to VesselsValue.com.
Apart from Deutsche Bank which controlled NPLs valued at roughly $70m, Finaval is expected to receive soon a green light on the proposed restructuring plan under article 67 of the Italian bankruptcy law by Italian banks for its remaining financial exposure of some $110m.
Once the restructuring is completed Finaval will have a fleet of seven vessels comprising two aframaxes and five medium range tankers, of which three are jointly owned with the Greek group Ancora Shipping.
