A 17-year-old panamax bulker managed by London-based Greek shipping company Diamantis Lemos Ltd will go under the hammer next month to pay off debt to Japanese investor Orix Group, court documents show.
The 74,800-dwt Angelic Grace (built 2001), the second-oldest vessel in Diamantis Lemos’ nine-ship fleet, is scheduled to be auctioned online in Piraeus on 3 October.
The reserve price is $5.5m, which appears low compared with VesselsValue's estimate of $7.9m, and Maritime Strategies International's forecast of between $8.8m and $10.1m.
The low reserve might reflect the forced nature of the sale, but also the possible expenses of bringing the Hudong-Zhonghua Shipbuilding-constructed ship back into trading shape.
The Greek-flagged Angelic Grace has been idling for several months at the Piraeus anchorage off the island of Salamis. Court documents retrieved by TradeWinds indicate it was detained there in April. Its last reported commercial charter was in early 2017.
Diamlemos Shipping Corp, the ship’s manager and Diamantis Lemos’ Piraeus-based affiliate, did not respond to a request for comment from TradeWinds.
The debt, which led to the arrest and forced sale of the Angelic Grace, originated with the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), formerly a big lender to Greek and international shipping.
Mortgaged over debt
The ship’s registered owner, Angeliki Charis Investment Corp, mortgaged the vessel in October 2015 to RBS over $8.78m of debt.
In March 2017, the UK lender flipped that debt to Orix Investment and Management Private Ltd.
This was likely part of a massive transfer of RBS shipping loans to Orix Corp. Orix chief executive and Japanese bank buccaneer Makoto Inoue signed a deal to buy $289m of debt from RBS at the time, as the bailed-out British lender was quitting shipping to shore up its balance sheet.
This loan transfer, as well as several others that followed in the coming months, raised concerns in Piraeus shipping circles about the debt’s new holders adopting a more aggressive stance toward creditors, sparking a wave of forced ship sales.
However, such fears largely proved misplaced or exaggerated.
Angeliki Charis got some breathing space to temporarily avert the ship’s auction, TradeWinds has learnt. The ship was originally scheduled to be auctioned on 6 June. But the shipowner convinced a Greek court to put the sale on hold after it managed to make an $815,000 down payment, representing one-quarter of the principal owed.
However, a few weeks later the court lifted its suspension on the auction after Angeliki Charis failed to make any additional payments.
Bidding to open
The sale is now set for 3 October after 10am Athens time (07.00 GMT). Proceeds will go towards paying off outstanding debt of nearly $3.26m. It is unclear whether that sum includes the $815,000 paid in June.
The Angelic Grace has been trading with Diamantis Lemos since it was delivered as a newbuilding from Hudong-Zhonghua, the Chinese yard that has built all of the vessels in its current fleet.
The company's standard policy is to trade vessels ordered as newbuildings. Diamantis Lemos is currently listed with five panamax bulkers built between 2000 and 2002 and four LR1 product tankers built between 2003 and 2006.
At least two of the company’s tankers, the 72,300-dwt sisterships Archangelos Gabriel (built 2005) and Despina (built 2006), are trading in the Penfield panamax tanker pool.
In February 2017, Diamantis Lemos was reported to have made a dry bulk purchase in the secondhand market for the first time in at least 15 years.
But the 75,000-dwt Conti Spinell (built 2011), which the company reportedly purchased from Germany’s Conti Group, later emerged in the fleet of Greek peer Empros Lines, as the Captain Tassos D.
