Schiffsfinanzierung im Wandel: Finanzintermediäre und maritime Wirtschaft am Finanzplatz Hamburg

Harald Wixforth

No 14-17, IBF Paper Series from IBF – Institut für Bank- und Finanzgeschichte / Institute for Banking and Financial History, Frankfurt am Main

Abstract: The relationship of companies in the maritime economy to banks has been neglected by researchers. While this is surprising, specific financing techniques in ship financing can be found. In addition, the topic has a high degree of currency: the relationship of shipping companies and shipyards to private and public financial intermediaries has come under massive criticism, especially since the last financial and banking crisis. A number of banks are accused of virtually initiating the new construction of vessels through reckless lending, which thus created a large volume of excess tonnage. In addition, the loans were allegedly often insufficiently collateralized so that a major portion had to be written off, which weighed down the banks' balance sheets. In political debate as well the topic was a "permanent issue" in the face of impending massive charges to the government. If one looks at the spectacular bankruptcies that have recently rocked both the maritime economy and the banking sector, the suspicion naturally arises that the ship financing business could be especially susceptible to a crisis. On the other hand, previous research findings show that a number of financial intermediaries, especially those located in the North and Baltic Sea areas important to shipbuilding, classified shipbuilding financing as rich in prospects and a lucrative business segment. Recourse to the past can clarify whether and the extent to which ship financing contained certain risks. This article intends to clarify this question for Hamburg - without question one of the most important German locations for both the maritime sector and the lending business.

JEL-codes: G21 N23 N24 N93 N94 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ger and nep-his
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/173434/1/1011362309.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:ibfpps:1417

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IBF Paper Series from IBF – Institut für Bank- und Finanzgeschichte / Institute for Banking and Financial History, Frankfurt am Main Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().