The largest ship-finance conference in the US will be making a comeback in New York this June, but will be mostly a virtual event.
Organisers say Marine Money Week is set to return from 21 to 23 June after the event was scrapped last year as the Covid-19 outbreak was still in its early stages.
While New York is in a far better position a year on and in various stages of reopening, the conference will be held mostly online with selected live events.
"This year's event will be 'hybrid'," the organisers said in a statement on Friday.
"While the conference will mostly be virtual ... there will also be in-person elements — including an opening networking cocktail reception for sponsors and the closing-bell ceremony at the Nasdaq MarketSite in Times Square."
The sprawling conference is one of shipping's largest events in the US and typically spawns side parties and receptions across the city.
New York reopening
New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said during a television appearance on Thursday that "our plan is to fully reopen New York City on 1 July".
“We are ready for stores to open, for businesses to open, offices, theatres, full strength,” De Blasio said in announcing the date on MSNBC.
De Blasio quickly was publicly challenged by his political rival, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, who said: “I don’t want to wait that long. I think if we do what we have to do we can reopen earlier."
New York had recorded some 934,000 coronavirus cases as of this week with more than 32,000 deaths. But it also had handed out more than 6m doses of vaccine and fully vaccinated 36% of the adult population.
Shipping's other major event of the summer, Nor-Shipping, also was to have taken place in Oslo in June.
Organisers elected to postpone it until January 2022, with a taster, mainly virtual event, in the first week of June when TradeWinds will hold a shipowners' forum.
