The appetite for foreign investment driving the Chinese lease finance boom is showing no signs of being satisfied. 

New players continue to crowd into the well-populated field, with already existing entities working to match traditional lenders both in pricing and service, and the most confident among them nudging the boundaries between ship finance and shipowning.

Last week's Marine Money Ship Finance & Offshore Summit, under the conference title "China Going Global", drew 370 delegates to the Ritz-Carlton in Shanghai's skyscraper jungle of Pudong, according to the count of organiser Kevin Oates.