The Chinese state has helped shipbrokers conclude at least one vessel sale as owners, brokers and lawyers struggle to do business under the current state of lockdown.
Partners of Optima Shipbroking said police last week used mobile phone location-tracking data to help enable a closing on an open-hatch handysize bulker.
The Saiki-built, 32,000-dwt Apuana D (renamed Ri Yun, built 1998) was sold for $3.45m by an unknown Italian owner to a Guangzhou-based owner active in the South Pacific log trades.
The deal involved the Singapore office of Banchera Costa on the seller’s side and the Shanghai office of Optima on the buyer’s.
But special arrangements had to be made to bring the parties together.
Legal formalities
The physical delivery of the ship took place in Hong Kong, but the simultaneous legal closing formalities proved more challenging to arrange.
For the buyer's side to travel from Shanghai to Singapore or even Hong Kong was out of the question because of disease control policies in both places.
And an HFW escrow lawyer was unable to attend at all because of the firm's policy banning partners and staff from all Shanghai meetings until further notice.
Video conferencing for those able to attend seemed to be the answer. But, as a result of Shanghai’s semi-lockdown, office building managers of all companies involved refused to let officials of the others enter for meetings.
But when the Optima broker hired a hotel conference room to host the Shanghai end of the link, hotel staff took a look at his ID and refused to let him enter, because he hailed from the province at the centre of the Wuhan coronavirus epidemic.
"I am from Hubei province," said an Optima sale-and-purchase broker, who was not willing to be mentioned by name.
"But I had not been in Hubei. I had left Shanghai early in January on a trip to Guangzhou for shiprepair business, and I planned to travel on to Hubei for Chinese New Year. But my ticket to Hubei was cancelled, so I have only been in Shanghai throughout the epidemic period."
The hotel was slow to appreciate the point.
“I didn’t know how to prove it, so I called the police,” the Optima broker said. “And the police’s service was very good. An officer showed up in about 15 minutes and checked my ID on his mobile phone.”
The police officer was quickly able to confirm the broker's account of his whereabouts during the period.
“I think he has some very powerful app installed that could show I had not been in Hubei province,” the broker said.
After that, there were no further arguments from the hotel bosses.
Chinese 'police is very powerful'
“The police is very powerful in China,” the broker said.
The closing took place despite the absence of the lawyer on the Shanghai end.
"Because the market is very terrible, both sides were willing to compromise a lot," he said.
Several brokers told TradeWinds this week that there is interest in China for panamax and supramax bulkers, as well as MR tankers. But potential buyers are waiting for sellers to drop their price expectations as the coronavirus epidemic batters demand for commodities.
