A team of Chinese ship finance stars is putting the finishing touches on a large investment fund designed to help the shipowning sector in Shenzhen develop.
Equator Fund Management, which will run the CNY 10bn ($1.54bn) Shenzhen Shipping Fund, is headed by a roster of very well-known names in Chinese shipping and ship finance.
The goal of the fund is to make the port metropolis into an all-round maritime centre. A higher-level goal is Beijing's strategic goal of turning the entire Pearl River Delta into a single giant maritime-based economy stretching from Guangzhou to Hong Kong.
"We are helping the Shenzhen municipal government set up a shipping fund," said Equator president and partner Yang Changkun, who also goes by CK Yang.
"Traditionally they have been strong on the harbour side, not shipping."
Equator chairman and partner Vincent Xu, who also goes by Xu Chun and is a former partner at law firm Stephenson Harwood, said Equator hopes to succeed where others have failed, pointing to regional projects to promote shipowning in cities such as Tianjin and Dalian.
“It is important for us not to think only of the Pearl River Delta but of the shipping industry in all of China,” Xu said.
Xu has stepped back from a partnership to a consultant position to take the new role. He formerly practiced at law firm Ince & Co and, before that, was in-house counsel at the Tsao family-controlled IMC Group.
Four of five partners in Equator come from top roles in the industry.
All but one of the team partners have been engaged in the project since 2019 on a part-time basis ahead of the launch of the Shenzhen fund. Yang, the former head of shipping and offshore at ICBC Leasing, told TradeWinds he joined in March of this year.
Yang enjoyed a high profile as head of the world's largest financially owned shipping and offshore fleet but parted ways with the Beijing giant in May 2019. He had previously held a leading position with Export-Import Bank of China.
Another partner and director is shipowner Su Ning, former CMB Financial Leasing head of shipping. Su was a sale-and-purchase executive at state-owned Cosco before his stint at CMB Financial Leasing. He left there in 2017 to start his own venture Front Line Capital.
Another Equator partner-director, Xiao Feng, is a 15-year veteran of Xu's former employer, IMC. A fifth, Mo Xuebing, has a financial and fund management background from outside shipping.
One shipping investment by Equator has already been reported: the order of a 45,000-cbm LNG carrier at China Merchants Heavy Industry for a customer in eastern China. The deal is believed to be separate from the fund manager's main Shenzhen project.
This story has been amended since publication because of an incorrect description of the roles of Peter Zhao Kuo and Jason Jia Hao, who remain as deputy heads of shipping at ICBC Leasing and have not joined Equator.
