Singapore owner First Ship Lease Trust (FSL Trust) has replaced its outgoing chief financial officer with an experienced German banker.
Markus Wenker will take over from the retiring Alan Mitchell on 4 May.
Wenker will become CFO designate on 20 March, to work alongside Mitchell during the handover period.
The German has more than 17 years of banking experience, including more than 14 in ship finance.
FSL Trust said he has a proven track record of structuring and negotiating complex ship finance transactions, as well as large-scale financial restructurings in the shipping industry, across various vessel segments.
He was previously head of ship finance at Greek lender Hellenic Bank, where he set up the ship finance unit and led its maritime expansion beginning in April 2016.
German experience
Wenker worked for HSH Nordbank and its predecessor Hamburgische Landesbank from 2002 to 2016.
He was involved in ship finance there from 2005 and joined the Greek clients desk.
Wenker later held different roles in the bank's restructuring group, focusing on international shipping companies.
FSL Trust is a product tanker and boxship owner.
The company said last month it would pay a small annual dividend in its first payout to shareholders since 2012, thanks to rising tanker rates in the fourth quarter.
FSL Trust disclosed the dividend as it reported net earnings in the final three months were $3.5m, which was its fourth straight quarter of profit.
The figure compared to a loss of $18.5m in the same period of 2018.
Part of the fleet traded in spot pools and managed to benefit from the fourth-quarter market upturn, fuelled by tighter tonnage supply and positive market sentiment ahead of the IMO 2020 deadline.
