Two of the most recognisable faces in German ship finance are working on a project to lure pension funds back into the industry.
Torsten Teichert and Ingmar Loges have teamed up to form Hamburg boutique outfit Portum Capital Partners, targeting companies seeking to diversify into shipping.
They are approaching German institutional investors they believe are ready to re-enter the market after an absence of many years.
“We are right now talking with big institutional partners in terms that they might be our clients,” Teichert told TradeWinds.
“There is an enormous desire or need of financing for new vessels. Mostly it will be green vessels. And I think we need institutional investors for this.”
Portum, which is Latin for “harbour”, brings together a five-strong finance desk led by Teichert and Loges, who for many years were synonymous with Germany’s KG (limited partnership) and banking scene.
Teichert was chief executive of German investment house Lloyd Fonds from 2000 to the end of 2017.
He has brought in former colleague Holger Schmitz, who was chief finance officer at Lloyd Fonds for much of that time. The two claim to have realised investments of more than €5bn ($5.66bn) over the years.
The desk is strengthened by Loges, a former head of ship-finance desks at DVB Bank and HSH Nordbank.
‘Old elephants’
“It’s old elephants,” Teichert said. “We know quite a bit, so thought why don’t we team up and see what is working.”
The trio have been joined by Dennis Barth, managing director of Procom Invest in Hamburg, whose experience in real estate will be used to solicit investors from other asset classes that are seeking to diversify into shipping.
The fifth partner is banking expert Dirk Auerbach, who has many years of experience with institutional investors at large accounting firms.
TradeWinds understands that initial plans had been to form a ship-finance bank. That idea seems to have been set aside due to the regulatory difficulties of establishing such an institution in Germany.
“We keep it in mind, it is a good idea. But our plan A is not setting up the bank, so we’ll start with a shipping boutique and we see,” Teichert said.
He expects Portum will not seek to attract shipowners looking to find funding. And it will not approach the US institutional investors that have populated the ship-finance market in recent years and have lost money.
“I don’t want to go to them. They know the market. They have their scouts,” he said. “Our approach is there is lots of German money around.”
Jumping through window of opportunity
Teichert acknowledged that a lot of obstacles remain for institutional investors. But he sees a window of opportunity in which they are ready to give other areas a try. “If there’s a window there, we’re going to try to jump in it and see whether it works.”
The market is changing, according to Teichert: “I strongly believe that the majority of financing in the future will be bareboat-leased for the big companies. Shipping will follow aviation.”
Shipping will continue to witness a significant amount of debt finance, he added, but that comes at a price, with good charterers having to pay around 5% for senior debt.
“Even for good addresses, it’s pretty expensive right now. Shipping is so devastatingly bad.”
Maritime Research Partners, a Hamburg research firm established by Loges and Behrend Oldenburg, found in a recent survey of 150 companies that banks remain willing to finance environmentally friendly ships.
“Almost two-thirds of the total group of shipowners, charterers and other industry experts state that their house banks were open to financing environmentally friendly technologies,” Loges said.
But respondents complained that many ship financiers apparently lack the technical knowledge to evaluate investments correctly.
About 60% said the banks were not familiar with the necessary investment sums for green technologies or the ecological benefits that could be achieved.
