Another important tranche of Asian ship financing is coming under pressure. The Japanese government has announced plans to tinker with the country’s Japanese Operating Lease with Call Option financing structures, known as JOLCOs, a market which had been fast expanding, fixing more than $4bn in deals last year.

In recent years, the number of cross-border JOLCO transactions – where ships are owned by Japanese special purpose companies, so called Tokumei Kumiai (TK), and then chartered to non-J...