Safe Bulkers is set to become the third US-listed shipping player to raise funds in the nascent Greek shipping bond market.
The bulker owner has formally applied to Athens Exchange authorities to go ahead with an issue and is expected to get approval soon, according to local finance market sources.
Newspaper Kathimerini reported that Safe Bulkers seeks to raise €100m ($113m) to fund further fleet expansion.
That would put the Safe Bulkers bond in the same league as Costamare, which in May last year broke open the Athens shipping bond market with an inaugural issue of unsecured five-year 2.7%-yielding notes.
In October, Capital Product Partners (CPLP) successfully sold a second, larger bond in Athens with a volume of €150m. CPLP's five-year unsecured paper pays a coupon of 2.65%.
Managers at Safe Bulkers declined to comment on the information.
Greek institutional and retail investors have been lapping up the shipping bonds offered to them so far.
On the sellers' side, bonds proving an attractive source of long-term funding for shipping companies at attractive rates. Even adding the cost of currency swaps, Greek shipping companies have been selling Athens bonds below the cost they would have incurred if selling them in Oslo or the US.
Big, non-Greek shipping players have secured even cheaper funding lately, issuing and refinancing bonds to lock in record-low interest rates.
AP Moller-Maersk issued €500m in 10-year unsecured bonds in November at 0.75%.
Hapag-Lloyd raised €300m for seven years at 2.5% and US-listed Seaspan Corp sold four different bonds amounting to $1.8bn in total.
