KG (limited partnership) trailblazer Hansa Treuhand’s admission that it can no longer raise shipping funds is a culmination of the hard process that has eroded the German shipowning and management sector over eight years of recession.

But it is more than that. The end of the fund-raising road for one of the most respected and long-standing of Hamburg-based shipfinancing houses symbolises that there is nowhere left to roll the can for some vessels.

Hansa