Greek DNA may continue to resist the inherent trend towards consolidation in the tanker industry, senior shipping players argued during TradeWinds' Shipowners Forum in Athens last week.
“There’s an old culture behind many of these companies,” Aegean Shipping Management chief executive Apostolos Poulovassilis argued.
When the going gets tough, he claimed some smaller Greek companies tended to go out of business temporarily rather than look to give up their autonomy as part of bigger groups.
Greeks find it hard to shed their ships, being the type of owners who regard their fleets as part of their extended family, ING Bank's global head of transportation finance Stephen Fewster said.
“If you have that sort of history, it's very difficult to come home to your wife and say, 'darling I’ve sold the fleet and the ship I’ve named after you — but now I have a million shares of DHT',” Fewster told a gathering of about 350 participants in Athens' Onassis Cultural Centre.
However, cold facts of increased regulation and higher requirements are likely to prevail in the long term, pushing small owners to seek partnerships, said Olympic Shipping & Management president and chief executive George Karageorgiou.
“Owners with less than five ships will need to consolidate and find a partner or merge, to reach a critical size of maybe 10 to 12 ships,” Karageorgiou said. “If they don’t want to do that, they can do pooling arrangements to increase their competitiveness.”
