Our Group’s Financial Advisory Team, first and foremost, aims to fully understand the current financial needs of our client, identify strengths and areas for improvement and then provide the best possible solutions. In order to assist our clients to set their go-forward strategy, we make use of our Group’s huge experience on the S&P side, our deep knowledge and feel of the market, as well as the feedback from our sophisticated Research & Valuations department. If this strategy requires the involvement of financial institutions for reasons such as the financing of a ship acquisition, or a restructuring of existing debt, then the team can provide a whole suit of alternatives through its extensive network of financiers, leasing houses and alternative financing providers.

Please note that  we maintain relationships with almost all the major European shipping banks and Japanese, Korean and Chinese leasing houses.  Especially regarding Chinese leasing, we are in close contact with leasing banks such as ICBC, EXIM, CMB, BoComm, private shipping leasing funds such as Mingsheng leasing, Huarong and State owned shipbuilders’ leasing arms such as CSSC, CSIC, and AVIC.  Having made the connection with any of the above, our team will also assist in the negotiation of any financing terms and ensure a smooth completion of any finance related project.

Our clientele includes well-established shipping companies from the whole spectrum of the industry ranging from small to medium and larger size organisations. Our experience shows that smaller and medium size companies use extensively our consultancy services for financial

planning and accessing financing sources, whilst larger companies benefit from our market intelligence and ability to advise and set benchmarks, given our extensive network and continuous dialogue with almost every active ship finance bank. The latter allows us to provide our clients with “real–time” feedback on the ship finance market status/terms/solutions, a service highly valued by our clients.

The FA Team is headed by George Laios, an experienced (ex) shipping banker – last served as Senior Director of the Royal Bank of Scotland. George has been a member of the BoD of the Association of Banking and Financial Executives of Hellenic Shipping for over 7 years, currently serving as the Deputy General Secretary of the Association.