Landon Thomas's story on dodgy shipping loans has some absolutely astonishing numbers, the biggest of which is simply the size of the market, which he pegs at a whopping $350 billion. " data-share-img="" data-share="twitter,facebook,linkedin,reddit,google,mail" data-share-count="false">

Landon Thomas‘s story on dodgy shipping loans has some absolutely astonishing numbers, the biggest of which is simply the size of the market, which he pegs at a whopping $350 billion.

The story is pegged to Eastwind Maritime, a shipper which went bust this summer owing $300 million on a fleet of 55 ships. That’s about $5.5 million per ship, which isn’t very much when the average five-year-old vessel was valued at about $88 million as of June of 2008. But things are different now:

Aozora Bank, a Japanese bank that in addition to being one of Eastwind’s top lenders is a major creditor of Lehman Brothers, found to its dismay that the value of the 12 Eastwind ships it now controlled was considerably lower than its $77 million exposure.

The biggest at-risk bank is German state-owned lender HSH Nordbank, with $50 billion of shipping loans. So far, it’s provisioned just $800 million of those, although it’s also received $19.4 billion in support from its shareholders, the regional German states of Hamburg and Schleswig-Holstein.

The problem is that the collateral on these loans is the ships themselves, and many of these ships are simply worthless given the glut of newer ships coming on to the market. So far, the shippers have been making their interest payments, which has helped the banks to avoid writing down the loans. But if the business dries up, the banks aren’t going to be happy with their security. It’s not a pretty picture for anybody concerned.