NORD/LB Norddeutsche Landesbank, the Offen Group shipping company and alternative-assets specialists Caplantic GmbH are setting up a joint venture in the sphere of shipping services and restructuring. The aim is make this joint venture under the name Crystal Ocean Advisors GmbH an international service provider for the restructuring and workout of non-performing loans in ship financing. With their respective competencies, the three partners can count on a systematic and very close intermeshing of expertise in the fields of shipping and financing.
The partners see an appreciable degree of interest among a large number of institutional investors towards financial involvement in the shipping sector, where there is at the same time a need for fresh capital. However, a considerable barrier to investment has until now been the fact that many of those investors have neither the technical expertise nor the special credit know-how which are essential towards the successful management of such investments.
It is against this background that the newly formed Crystal Ocean Advisors GmbH joint venture will be offering its services: the company has the technical expertise, the financing know-how and the ability to map and technically model all the relevant risks. Highly specialized and leading market participants in their respective fields, the three partners have joined forces with the aim of setting new standards in the restructuring of shipping loans and the in many cases associated optimization of ship management structures. Crystal Ocean Advisors GmbH acts exclusively as service provider, and there is no transfer of credit risks to the joint venture.
The Offen Group will above all be contributing technical know-how to the joint venture. A joint venture between NORD/LB, the Talanx Group and Bankhaus Lampe and specialists in alternative assets, Caplantic GmbH will be responsible for risk management, the modelling of quantitative models and reporting to investors. NORD/LB will primarily be contributing specialized expertise in the financing and workout of shipping loans. The newly established company is a further key element in NORD/LB's strategic development into a credit asset manager.
The managing directors of Crystal Ocean Advisors GmbH will be Christoph Geck-Schlich, Chief Investment Officer of the Offen Group, and Dr. Michael Schwalba, CEO of Caplantic GmbH.
"As opposed to other asset classes, the shipping market – at least in Germany – does not yet have any provider of an integrated service comprised of both technical as well as financial components", said Mr. Schwalba. "Traditional shipping companies in many cases lack the necessary expertise in regulatory matters and financial mathematics, while service providers, just like investors, as a rule have no mastery of technical ship management."
"Especially in today's shipping markets, the optimization of ship operating costs by way of professional ship management is a decisive factor towards being economically successful as shipping company. Technical expertise and commercial shipping know-how go hand in hand here", says Mr. Geck-Schlich. "We firmly believe that it is particularly important to be able to contribute 40 years of experience in shipping operations."
"Our joint venture offers unique integrated services based on specialized technical expertise and decades of experience in the financing of ships", says Oliver Faak, Head of Ship Finance at NORD/LB and designated chairman of the Supervisory Board of Crystal Oceans Advisors GmbH. "Our business model is particularly aimed at cash flow optimization, irrespective of whether this merely involves the restructuring and workout of loans or even the technical optimization of a ship."
Contact:
NORD/LB: Dr. Thomas Klodt, Tel. 0511 361 2758, thomas.klodt@nordlb.de
Offen Group: Christoph Geck-Schlich, Tel. 040 34843 200, cgs@offengroup.de
Caplantic GmbH: Dr. Michael Schwalba, Tel. 0511 9999 31 01, michael.schwalba@caplantic.com
With total assets of EUR 190 billion, NORD/LB Norddeutsche Landesbank is among Germany's leading commercial banks. Its core business fields include structured financing in the energy and infrastructure sectors, ship and aircraft financing, corporate banking, capital market business and the servicing of private and corporate customers. The bank is headquartered in Hanover, Braunschweig and Magdeburg, with branch operations in Düsseldorf, Munich, Hamburg, Schwerin and Stuttgart. NORD/LB is represented outside of Germany by a covered bond bank in Luxembourg and branches in London, New York, Singapore and Shanghai.
The Offen Group is a German shipping company with headquarters in Hamburg. Founded by Claus-Peter Offen in 1971, it operates a fleet of modern container ships (1,800 -14,000 TEU) with over 100 vessels. These also include the CPO Italy class, seven structurally identical Super Post Panamax container ships with a capacity of 14,000 TEU each. The shipping company's ships primarily undertake scheduled services for the major charterers, such as Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC), Maersk, CMA CGM or Hapag Lloyd. In doing so the company handles the technical, operative and commercial management as well as the crewing of the ships. Since 2007 the company has also been active in the chemicals and product tanker market and in the bulk market. The shipping company's fleet also includes eight product tankers with 36,000 dwt each, eight product tankers with 52,000 dwt each and four Capesize-class bulk cargo ships.
Caplantic GmbH is a joint venture between NORD/LB, the Talanx Group and Bankhaus Lampe. Caplantic's core competencies lie in products and services in the spheres of alternative assets, financial solutions and private equity. These activities above all include the structuring and management of investment products relating to asset classes such as ships, aircraft, real estate, renewable energies and private equity. The Financial Solutions unit at Caplantic currently holds mandates for the risk management of over 9,500 individual loans with an overall volume of EUR 15 billion. Caplantic is a financial services institution regulated by Germany's Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin), which means that all processes are subject to particularly closely monitored quality requirements.
