Monday 16 March 2009

Titanic

According to Bloomberg: About 45 percent of U.S. rigs have been shut since September, which means fourth-quarter gas production will tumble 5.2 percent, faster than the 1.9 percent decline in use, the Energy Department forecast. Prices will rise to $7 per million British thermal units by January from $3.897 today on the New York Mercantile Exchange, according to a Bloomberg News survey of 20 analysts. The gain would be the largest since the first half of 2008.

But this is Bloomberg.
We become a little prudent as prices are going nowhere.
Last weeks we mentioned natural gas and copper.
All their upward price movements are stalled.
Even de Baltic Dry index is not going higher for the moment. Now be careful with charts where you can click in the box for a log scale of not.
As markets are at the bottom charts without logarithmic scaling are less sexy than with a log scale.


But anyway…

Rapidly deteriorating conditions in the shipping sector are squeezing the ratings on European banks exposed to the shipping industry. Many shipping companies are struggling following a sharp downturn in global trade and challenging funding conditions. We expect these difficulties to result in a material increase in banks’ loan loss provisions. We see pressure on banks coming from an increasing number of loan defaults, rapidly deteriorating shipping company credit quality, and weaker recovery expectations due to falling asset values. In addition, we believe banks’ capital ratios may decline as deteriorating creditworthiness feeds through internal rating models and increases the relative risk-weighting under Basel II.

European banks are especially exposed to drybulk and container shipping, the fundamentals of which are “particularly weak.”
The S&P analysts highlighted seven banks with significant shipping exposures - DnB NO, DVB, KfW IPEX-Bank, NIBC, HSH Nordbank, Norddeutsche Landesbank Girozentrale and Nordea.
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