, , . . . . . . . 2010 10 50 . 2016 65 . 35~40 . . (EIA) 7 380 . 2010 3 2 . DNB 3 7% . 1.5% . . . 10 2.1% . 10 1.1% . .

2010 68 2012

116 . 9 80 2013 . 2010 330 2012 580 . 3~4 50 . , , , . (CEO) . . . AP - 10 4 . . . 7 (LPG) . . . 2010 10 . .

Energy Boom Drives Demand for Tankers

Rising North American Energy Exports Lead to Shipbuilding Frenzy
As the energy boom continues in North America, shipping operators and investors are now pouring billions of dollars into building new oceangoing tankers. Costas Paris explains the transforming product-tanker shipping demand. Photo: Getty Images

LONDONShipping operators and investors are pouring billions of dollars into building new oceangoing tankers to transport diesel, gasoline and aviation fuel scrambling to keep up with North America's energy boom. The shipbuilding frenzy is another knock-on effect of an energy revolution unfolding in the U.S. and Canada, where new drilling and extraction technology has unlocked vast new reservoirs of crude oil and natural gas. The U.S. still imports part of its crude-oil needs, but the newly tapped American oil has lowered costs for refiners. That is allowing them to better compete with their overseas rivals, ratcheting up exports and fueling demand for new tankers. New York-based Scorpio Tankers Inc. STNG -1.56% has grown from a little-known firm of around a dozen ships in 2010 into one of the world's biggest products-tanker operators, with about 50 vessels. Scorpio has an order-book of 65 new ships, worth between $3.5 billion and $4 billion, expected to be delivered by the beginning of 2016. "In its simplest terms, the U.S. exportsand refinery expansions around the worldare transforming product-tanker shipping demand," said Robert Bugbee, Scorpio's president. In July, U.S. refiners exported a record 3.8 million barrels of products a day, according to the latest monthly data from the Energy Information Administration. That's up nearly two thirds from 2010 exports. Nikolay Dyvik, head of shipping research at Oslo-based DNB Markets, expects that to translate into demand growth for product tankers of 7% in terms of capacity on average annually over the next three years. In comparison, demand for crude-oil tankers will likely decline by 1.5% over the same period, partly on the expectation that U.S. imports of crude will continue to fall. It isn't just U.S. refining exports driving tanker demand. Across the globe, growth in refining capacity is likely to rise to 2.1% a year over the next 10 years, up from 1.1% a year in the past decade, according to industry estimates.

That has already boosted the global fleet of refined-product tankers in recent years, according to global maritime advisers Drewry. New ship orders shot up from 68 vessels in 2010, to 116 in 2012. With 80 ships already ordered in the first nine months of the year, 2013 orders should top that, analysts said. The combined tonnage of new orders rose to 5.8 million in 2012 from 3.3 million in 2010. Meanwhile, industry officials estimate private-equity players have pumped around $5 billion into financing product tankers over the past three to four years. For some analysts, the shipbuilding is raising red flags amid gluts in other sectors such as container ships, crude-oil tankers, and bulk carriers used for transporting commodities such as coal and grain. "The combination of rock-bottom prices to build new ships and the fast-growing investment in product tankers will lead to excess capacity," said Lars Jensen, chief executive of Copenhagen-based SeaIntel Maritime Analysis. "In a cyclical industry like shipping, overcapacity is part of the game." But for now, growing exports is driving investment from both traditional shipping players and outsiders. Maersk Tankers, a unit of Danish shipping giant AP Moller-Maersk,MAERSKB.KO +0.38% plans to invest around $400 million for up to 10 product tankers, while trying to sell a number of crude oil tankers, people familiar with the situation said. Blackstone Group BX +2.70% LP and Greek shipping firm Eletson Holdings teamed up this month to form Eletson Gas, a new shipping company said to be worth around $700 million that will transport liquefied petroleum gas, or LPG, a refined product used in cooking and heating. Blackstone will provide the capital to build new ships or acquire used ones. The new demand is even luring back some tanker operators who gave up on refined products years ago. Athens-based Metrostar Management Corp. exited the tankers market in 2010, but now has 10 ships on order, plus options for two more. "The dynamic change in the crude and products market was the defining factor leading us to re-enter the specific sector," said Ioannis Theodorakis, an executive at Metrostar.

 M&A (M&A) . IT, , .

. PC . . IBM PC 2005 . 7 2,500 . . 5 47 . 2004 . 2004 37 45 . 238 243 . . . 2010 30% 2012 24% . RBC , , M&A . . , , , , , , .

 . 10 . . 40 . . 2009 . . . .

Chinese Acquisition Appetites Shift From Resources When it comes to global mergers and acquisitions, China has long been seen as a buyer of natural resources and not much else. But bankers increasingly expect to see companies in industries like technology, real estate and food buying assets overseas, spurred by government policies and readily available financing. The shift in appetite has been noticeable in recent weeks. Chinese personalcomputer maker Lenovo Group Ltd. is considering a bid for struggling Canadian smartphone maker BlackBerry Ltd., which The Wall Street Journal reported last week. Should Lenovo pull the deal off, it would be one of the highest-profile acquisitions by a Chinese player on the global stage. Lenovo bought International Business Machines Corp.s PC business in 2005. Meanwhile, Chinese conglomerate Fosun International Ltd. announced plans last week to buy One Chase Manhattan Plaza in New York City for $725 million. That comes on the heels of Chinas biggest-ever outbound deal by a private company, when Chinese pork company Shuanghui International Holdings Ltd. agreed to buy Smithfield Foods Inc. for $4.7 billion in May. The number of overseas deals done by private companies or non-state-owned publicly listed companies has been rising fairly consistently since 2004, when 45 deals valued at $3.7 billion were done by such players, according to Dealogic. So far this year, 238 overseas deals valued at $24.3 billion have been done by Chinas private companies. It used to be that the countrys big state-owned enterprises did the bulk of Chinas overseas mergers, and the need to secure resources was the main objective of deal-making activity. But as Chinas economy matures, the resource angle is narrowing. Energy deals made up 30% of overall outbound deal activity in 2010, but by 2012 this fell to 24%, according to a report this week on Chinese outbound acquisitions by data provider Mergermarket and law firm Paul Hastings. Mining and oil and gas have been accounting for the bulk of outbound M&A in the past, but were starting to see that percentage drop even though the volume [of resources deals] is still very strong, said Ken Wang, RBC Capital Markets head of natural resources in Hong Kong. We see interest in deals in agriculture, the food industry, the automobile industry, entertainment, theaters, real estate, technologyother sectors that are

all related to consumers, he said. As more and more people start to consume and the economy is shifting, people say, what can we get from the West? Government policies have also been supportive of private companies buying overseas assets. Last year, 10 government departments jointly issued opinions about actively encouraging private companies to make acquisitions abroad. One sign of such support: The government now allows private companies to use onshore assets to secure foreign-currency loans from Chinese banks. Vivian Lam, a Hong Kong-based partner at Paul Hastings, said that for Shanghui Internationals takeover of Smithfield, state-owned Bank of China was quick to offer up $4 billion of financing, a sign that government policies to promote outbound acquisitions are starting to work. The Shuanghui deal could go a long way toward encouraging other private companies in China to make acquisitions overseas. In the acquisition of Volvo [by Chinese car maker Geely Automobile Holdings in 2009] and the Shuanghui deal, the buyers are relatively smaller than the seller, but theyre able to use a competitive international financing structure to make the deal happen, said Alex Zhang, a Shanghai-based partner at law firm White & Case. Mr. Zhang said interest in international deals from private-sector Chinese players is the highest he has ever seen. Private companies feel they have been squeezed out by the big state-owned enterprises. They have very limited room for growth in the Chinese market, Mr. Zhang said. Having a platform outside China, in the long term, theyre going to benefit from that.

, ?

 , .

4 (UAE) 150 . . . . . . . . 16 7,000 (17 ) . . 8 8% 463 7,000 , 1% 414 5,000 . ANZ

 ( ) . . 23 . 10 10 (ECB) . .

South Korea Seeks to Reduce Reliance on U.S. Dollar

!
South Korea is seeking to boost international trade by cutting its dependence on the dollar just as worries linger over the greenback amid the U.S. government shutdown. Asia's fourth-largest economy has signed two currency-swap agreements with major trading partner Indonesia and oil producer United Arab Emirates over the past week worth a combined $15 billion. That adds to two existing agreements with China and Japan, and officials say more are planned though they declined to give names. The deals allow central banks to buy currencies from each other, making it easier for commercial banks to get hold of foreign exchange and facilitate direct trade settlement that cuts out the use of the greenback in transactions. While the swaps remove trade and investment barriers by making commerce quicker and cheaper, they have also been completed just as the dollar has dropped in recent months. The Federal Reserve has pushed down bond yields through aggressive monetary easing while more recently the U.S. budget impasse has dented investors' confidence in the world's reserve currency. The U.S. government remains in a gridlock over its budget and is approaching the Oct. 17 debt-ceiling deadline, when it will hit its $16.7 trillion borrowing limit. "The latest deals are largely aimed at further strengthening economic cooperation," said Choi Heenam, director general of the finance ministry's International Finance Bureau in Seoul. "The reduced dependence on the U.S. dollar would eventually help them better cope with market volatility caused by the greenback." Trade-heavy South Korea's exports totaled $46.37 billion and imports were $41.45 billion in August 2013, up 8% and 1% from August 2012, according to data from the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy. "This makes sense as Korea is a big trading nation and it imports the bulk of its resource needs," said Irene Cheung, Asia FX strategist at ANZ in Singapore. "To some extent, we also think Korea likes to see less reliance on the USD, given recent events."

The swaps can also be used in times of crisis to ensure countries have easy access to global markets and can better defend their currencies in case there is a sudden slump. In recent years, China has entered 23 currency swap lines with several of its trading partners, the latest with the European Central Bank on Oct. 10, to encourage more use of the yuan internationally. However, analysts say that unlike China, South Korea isn't promoting its currency as an international trade or reserve currency for now.