>>1982234The company I work for has been involved in many containership transactions
It's a very weird market
It's dominated by a few huge carriers, all of which have more money than they know what to do with. Some of them like COSCO are some of the largest shipowners in the world, yet they have more cash in the bank than the value of their entire in the water fleet.
But if they spend too much ordering newbuildings, the market will crash (we are here right now). If they spend too much buying used ships, the market will skyrocket. If they spend too much chartering-in too many ships, the market will also skyrocket.
They cannot return the money to shareholders because these are usually state-owned (or similar) companies and the state considers them strategic assets, not cash cows.
Normally a company with such a huge balance sheet would be a prime target for acquisitions, but they cannot be sold because their countries consider them strategic assets.
So how do they trim their balance sheets? Well they order so many newbuildings that the market crashes for a few years which makes everyone lose money so their balance sheets can calm down a little bit. In the process, maybe some smaller regional rival goes under and gets taken over.
It's also an oligopoly and the market leader is the Italian mafia. So there's that interesting bit.
