Hamburg Commercial Bank has successfully placed a ship Pfandbrief with a volume of € 500 million. The offer was heavily oversubscribed.
The bond backed by ship mortgages with a term of two years and a coupon of 3.625% was placed on the capital market mainly in Germany (41%), the UK (22%) and Scandinavia (8%), HCOB announced. [ds_preview]
The mandated syndicate banks Commerzbank, Danske Bank, DekaBank, J.P. Morgan, NordLB and UniCredit closed the heavily oversubscribed order book with a volume of more than €4 billion at a final spread of 73 basis points above the swap mid-point. The agency Moody’s has given it an Aa3 rating.
Ship Pfandbriefe are currently only available from HCOB
HCOB is currently the only bank that issues ship Pfandbriefe, the statement continues. “We are once again demonstrating our ability to refinance ourselves on the capital market at good conditions,” said Marc Ziegner, CFO of HCOB. This underlines the bank’s strong position in the area of ship financing. At the same time, the ship Pfandbrief serves to diversify the funding.
Hamburg Commercial Bank is an established player in global ship financing. The diversified shipping portfolio reportedly includes container ships, bulk carriers and tankers. At the end of the first half of 2023, assets in the Shipping division amounted to € 2.9 billion.
Ship Pfandbriefe are bonds that are issued with a fixed interest rate. They must be covered by ship mortgages (loans) of at least the same amount, term and interest income.
HCOB rediscovered this form of refinancing at the beginning of 2022 with its first ship mortgage bond after a long break. A volume of € 500 million was also placed at that time. However, the interest rate of 1.375% with a term of three years was significantly lower.
Another important player in local maritime financing is Berenberg Bank. Its head of shipping, Philipp Wünschmann, is confident about the bank’s maritime business, but also sees a need for transparency and discussion, especially when it comes to working with investors. There are still too many prejudices against shipping on the capital market, Wünschmann recently said on HANSA PODCAST. Among other things, he discusses credit funds and the “significantly better credit rating” of shipping companies.
