CMIG Leasing is working to sell its two biggest remaining shipping assets as its stricken parent group struggles with bond payments.
Sources said AVIC International Leasing is said to be the leading contender to pick up the 9,411-teu sisterships MSC Michela and MSC Clea (both built 2016). But the client, container giant Mediterranean Shipping Co (MSC), is understood to be reluctant to cooperate on documentation, which is slowing the sale process.
The Jiangnan Shanghai Changxing Heavy Industry-built sisterships are understood to have been circulated informally to a number of Chinese ship-finance players before stock-listed AVIC was called upon.
AVIC officials declined to confirm the negotiations towards a transaction. An aviation and shipping official of CMIG Leasing could not be reached for comment.
Diversified assets
Shipping forms only a small part of the CNY 300bn ($44.3bn) portfolio of CMIG Leasing's parent, financially stricken China Minsheng International Group (CMIG). Its major sectors include assets in solar energy, manufacturing, sustainable and renewable energy, real estate and business jets.
But the whole group is understood to be under pressure after a partial payment of a CNY 3bn private placement bond in late January and a sell-off by bond investors last week, according to Chinese media reports. The sell-off reportedly saw a CNY 4.48bn three-year bond lose 30% of its value.
Chinese financial news organisation Caixin reported this week that 15 CMIG bonds mature this year. The company must come up with CNY 20.8bn in repayments to bond investors.
All investment sectors in the group have been asked to pitch in to build liquidity.
This is not the first round of asset sell-offs to affect the company's container shipping fleet.
Those of similar names
In September 2018, TradeWinds reported on the sale of five panamax and sub-panamax containerships in the fleet of Singapore's Pacific International Lines for $88.9m.
CMIG Leasing is one of several unrelated Chinese companies involved in shipping that share the Minsheng name. The best known is Minsheng Financial Leasing, a subsidiary of non state-owned China Minsheng Bank.
CMIG Leasing is part of a second Minsheng. Dong Wenbiao, the former chairman of China Minsheng Bank, split with his former group and organised 59 Chinese corporations as shareholders in the confusingly named CMIG. CMIG Leasing is CMIG's joint venture with South Korea's KEB Hana Bank.
A third Minsheng is equity investor China Minsheng Trust, which is understood to have some overlapping shareholders with CMIG but no management link.
The fourth and oldest Minsheng is a river and coastal container and car-carrier specialist, Minsheng Shipping, which dates back to pre-revolutionary China.
