Ship finance: Banner year for revolvers, Oslo bonds and take-private deals
- Shipowners are in the driver’s seat with debt terms; they have continued to deleverage and replace term loans with revolving credit facilities
- Owners heavily tapped the Oslo bond market for the second year in a row, accessing unsecured credit at attractive spreads
- The US equity market continues to be problematic, prompting more privatisations, but Okeanis’s above-NAV share sale in November offers hope of future offerings
There’s no shortage of money available for shipowners who want to spend it. The question for 2026 is: Will the market give shipowners a reason to leverage up again and use the bounty of capital they’re being offered?
