The ship lease specialists of Smarine Advisors are partly splitting up and starting over, more than a year after Chinese Communist Party officials detained the company founder.
Some staff from the Shanghai-based financial lease arranger quietly rebranded last month under the name Tidalwind, while Smarine representatives in Greece and Norway have unveiled new ship finance shops there, both under the name Alpha Shipping Advisors.
The move comes at a time when Chinese financial intermediaries and their commission-based business model are under pressure, following Communist Party and government investigations. TradeWinds has reported on the detention of 10 Chinese ship finance executives since the beginning of 2022, all well-known to the international shipping finance market.
Among the first was Smarine founder Wang Wei (Eric Wang).
Under Wang, Smarine was a pipeline of Chinese finance for international owners, with close links to most major leasing houses and also to export credit giant the Export-Import Bank of China. The consultancy also enjoyed an enthusiastic following in the European market through satellite operations under veteran shipping bankers in Athens and Oslo.
TradeWinds reported in early 2022 that Wang along with his former CExim boss Li Li had been taken away for investigation by the Yunnan province branch of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI), an office of the Communist Party.
No other Smarine staff besides Wang have been targeted, but Wang’s colleagues in China are understood to have been questioned.
Smarine’s former director and head of research James Chen, now of Tidalwind according to his LinkedIn page, recently published Smarine’s annual survey of Chinese ship finance volume and values, but the report avoided referring to the author’s company by name.
Chen could not immediately be reached for comment and the Smarine website now consists of blank pages.
Smarine had been represented in Athens and Oslo by former Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) man Nick Daskalakis and former Nordea banker Thor Erling Kylstad.
Daskalakis told TradeWinds his new shop Alpha Shipping Advisors Ltd is still a work in progress, but that he will be expanding his focus both geographically and otherwise, from Chinese lease finance to alternative finance and also mortgage finance.
“It’s going to be a broader product offering,” he said, but he concurred in Chen’s strong take on the resiliency of Chinese lease finance.
“The appetite for leasing has not been influenced by all the negative news this past year,” Daskalakis said. “But at the end of the day, you represent the owner’s interest, and Chinese lease financing is not the answer to everything, as Western bank financing is not the answer to everything.”
He underscored that he is unable to speak for other former Smarine staff, but indicated that he wants to continue to work closely with his Chinese former colleagues.
“I found myself having to start fresh for the second time, the first being the [2016] RBS exodus,” he said. “Everybody’s making their own decisions.”
Oslo-based Kylstad was unwilling to discuss Smarine or his new venture Alpha Shipping Advisors AS. Norwegian corporate records show that Kylstad gave this name to a previously dormant company last November.
