Athens: XRTC, the company run by George Xiradakis, advises shipping banks that want to create international and Greek shipping portfolios. For the past five years XRTC has been heavily focused on China, in particular the China Development Bank (CDB).
Xiradakis has been especially busy of late as he chaperoned a number of top owners around China in tow with Greek prime minister Antonis Samaras’s May trip to Beijing and Shanghai.
The Greek premier's trip was successful for many reasons, Xiradakis says. “Greece came back to its economic partner and in fact announced the end of the Euro exit fears verifying that Greece is now prepared to host Chinese investments in its territory.”
Similarly, the presence of senior representatives from the Greek shipping community forged ever closer maritime ties between the two countries. The three loans that were signed on the trip showed the trust of major Greek shipowners to the Chinese finance market and vice versa. Anangel's and Diana's syndicated transactions with China’s ExIm and DNB and the bilateral transaction of China Development Bank (CDB) with Paragon Shipping added a total of about $230m in the Sino-Greek Ship Financing Scheme increasing the loans signed since Wei Jiabao's announcement four years ago to approximately $1.4bn. Moreover, the signing of mature term sheets by Golden Union with CDB as well as the cooperation between Dynagas and ExIm on cooperation in the LNG market shows the interest of Greeks in advanced vessels. George Economou's discussions with Shanghai Waigaoqiao Shipbuilding over possible offshore orders was another positive development.
While all contracts signed on the trip were important the most noteworthy one, says Xiradakis, was a memorandum of understanding signed between the Greek privatisation agency and CDB. This will see Chinese investments in Greece soar as well as allowing Greek shipowners to form joint ventures with Chinese investors.
Developing Sino-Greek partnerships in shipping investments in the form of joint ventures is something XRTC sees as a new growth area. “We strongly believe that in the near future the Shanghai capital market will be ready to host such schemes and will provide a lot of opportunities to both Chinese and Greek investors and shipping operators,” the finance guru reckons.
There was a lot of misleading talk about 142 ships being signed up during the prime minister’s trip, something that no doubt brought heart palpitations to other under pressure shipowners around the world. The number actually refers to the vessels that comprise the current Greek orderbook in China including the vessels that are under construction and the contracts that have been signed.
“This number corresponds to 10% to 15% of the total Chinese current orderbook in terms of the number of vessels but certainly more in terms of value,” Xiradakis says, adding: “The encouraging sign however on the Greek orderbook in China is not only the volume of orders but the commencement of discussions and the real focus of Greeks in ordering high tech vessels including LNG and offshore vessels. Within the next months I expect certain developments on these issues.”
The spate of newbuild orders in recent months would suggest that Greek owners can see the market has bottomed out. Xiradakis agrees, saying there’s plenty more orders to come from the Mediterranean nation too. “Greek shipowners have mastered for many years how to navigate the shipping cycles,” Xiradakis relates, “thus according to our view they will keep ordering across all sectors and they will even turn towards the most sophisticated sectors.” [04/06/13]
