Costamare has become the first shipping company to sell a bond in Greece.
The US-listed, Greek-controlled containership owner raised €100m ($122m) from unsecured five-year bonds that will trade in the Athens financial market, sales managers said in an announcement.
The issue was heavily oversubscribed among potential investors in a book offering that ran from Wednesday to Friday last week.
Costamare received bids for bonds worth 6.7 times as much as it initially planned. As a result, the annual coupon for the five-year bond was set at just 2.7% — the bottom of the price range in the company's initial guidance.
The containership owner, which is led by Greece's Constantakopoulos family, has said it intends to use the net proceeds of the bonds to repay indebtedness, acquire vessels, as well as for working capital purposes.
Much more than a refinancing exercise, however, the sale's primary objective was to cultivate a potential new source of capital among Greek players, such as banks, investment funds and retail investors.
Sales managers of the bond were local lenders Piraeus Bank and Alpha Bank, as well as Athens-based brokerage Euroxx Securities.
The sale could open the way for other Greek shipping firms to tap the bond market.
Despite being around for more than 140 years, the financial market in Athens had never before managed to establish itself as a vehicle for raising meaningful sums for shipowners.
Greek investment bankers approached Costamare to be the first outfit to tap the market, in which onshore Greek companies have already launched several larger bond issues.
