2026 18th Annual Capital Link Shipping & Marine Services Forum | Financing Global Shipping

Yeah, first of all, I guess the ship financing market, as we already, I think, agreed here, is in a very competitive situation.

So it's good for all of you guys and ladies.

It's not as it was in 2016.

And I think it's fair to say that it is more challenging these days to finance a vessel than 10 years ago, where you basically could do everything.

So the market has developed and you have all the choices in your hand.

And as many said in many conferences as well, the owners dictate the market.

That was one of the quotations I read.

I'm not that happy with this quotation.

Still, I guess there are, if you do this conservatively, there are still good options to finance.

The question is whether the capital that we need, and we are not a balance sheet bank, so we need third party capital to convince, to come in to ship finance.

and they see the margin level that we have reached now, they would rather say, hey, what is my alternative? Can I go to other industries? So probably we have seen, we are at the peak in the cycle for ship finance and probably it is now the time to be careful not to make mistakes because we have a track since 2015, 16, When I joined the bank and we first had the fund of, let's say, insurance backed money.

So there's a zero loss track so far.

And this is what these people like, long term and no losses.

So I think it is now to be careful not to make these mistakes.

And especially the pricing is the pricing.

But what concerns me more is the structural elements.

that fade away.

We see elements that we have seen pre-2008 in terms of covenants or non-covenants, and I think this is a development we should take care of.

And, Basilios, do you share the same view as another bank on the panel?

I mean, clearly, this is what is happening.

At the same point in time, we do have a totally different approach to how we look at things at Citi.

And that's because we are not asset financiers.

So whether it's a 10% LTV, does it make the project something that we will lend against? No.

So we are corporate financiers.

So we look at the corporate, we look at the client as a whole.