Forecasting the Future
Posted on | January 12, 2010 | No Comments
It’s my great pleasure to host a webinar for CapitalLink (Sign up its Free!) this afternoon on the Future of the Shipping industry.
So what signs in the sky (or goats’ entrails do you look for) when trying to be a shipping soothsayer?
The BDI has seen a modest uptick. (about 10% in the last 3 weeks)…..But many Chinese yards say that deliveries will be up, and up again, in 2010 and 2011.
Some veterans of industry cycles have warned that the real long-term threat to recovery is that, with bank lending declining and interest rates likely to rise, shipping will be less attractive to private equity investors, because the yields that they seek will be unobtainable.
That’s one way of looking at it. The optimist, however, has another take: he or she is saying that this is just what the real shipping industry needs.
As the saying goes: feed a cold, starve a fever.
We’ve got a fever. If the flow of funding is now reduced, or cut off, shipping will revert to its sound conservative basis as a vital part of the global supply chain, rather than another “asset play”.
Will only the strong survive? Will China rescue the weak as well? How strong is China?
Stay tuned to find out what my expert panel think.
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