Deutsche Bank has warned of lenders taking a more assertive stance on non-performing loans in the German market.
Klaus Stoltenberg, global head of ship finance at the lender, told the TradeWinds Shipowners Forum at Posidonia: "There is no more room to kick cans."
He explained: "People are prepared at financial institutions to face reality, mark their loans, adjust to market values."
And he said that sooner or later people run out of arguments and must face reality, meaning more loan loss provisions and crystallisation of losses.
"I believe that is exactly what will happen in the next months and years," the financier said.
"This may be bad news for some of the clients but there will be others to take over and this does not have to be a bad thing in itself."
Earlier, Stoltenberg had told the audience that he believed the decision to lend today was not about steel but real cash flows.
"If they are not there you should think twice whether you are going to consider a project," he said.
Richard Fulford-Smith quipped that he "loved the banks".
"We are at the point in the cycle where they should be interested, but they never are," he said.
"The truth of the matter is when we get to the bottom of the cycle we talk about all the intelligent things we should have done to avoid getting into the problems we did."
