Shipping investments

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Shipping investments are a form of alternative investment into an asset related to worldwide shipping. This could be into ships themselves, or a related asset such as containers, with the expectation of capital appreciation, dividends, and/or interest earnings.

Alternative investment

An alternative investment or alternative investment fund (AIF) is an investment or fund that invests in asset classes other than stocks, bonds, and cash. The term is a relatively loose one and includes tangible assets such as precious metals, art, wine, antiques, coins, or stamps and some financial assets such as real estate, commodities, private equity, distressed securities, hedge funds, carbon credits, venture capital, film production, financial derivatives, and cryptocurrencies. Investments in real estate, forestry and shipping are also often termed "alternative" despite the ancient use of such real assets to enhance and preserve wealth. In the last century, fancy color diamonds have emerged as an alternative investment class as well. Alternative investments are to be contrasted with traditional investments.

Freight transport physical process of transporting commodities and merchandise goods and cargo

Freight transport is the physical process of transporting commodities and merchandise goods and cargo. The term shipping originally referred to transport by sea, but in American English, it has been extended to refer to transport by land or air as well. "Logistics", a term borrowed from the military environment, is also fashionably used in the same sense.

A shipping container is a container with strength suitable to withstand shipment, storage, and handling. Shipping containers range from large reusable steel boxes used for intermodal shipments to the ubiquitous corrugated boxes. In the context of international shipping trade, "container" or "shipping container" is virtually synonymous with "intermodal freight container," a container designed to be moved from one mode of transport to another without unloading and reloading.

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Characteristics

Some of the characteristics of shipping investments may include:

Ship ownership

Investment in ships involves purchasing or leasing new or second-hand vessels and either operating them directly or chartering them to other operators. Investors seek either profits generated from shipping fees, capital appreciation of the vessels themselves, or both. Due to the high capital commitments involved, ship investment has tended to be limited to ultra high net worth individuals and syndicates.

In the UK, investments in cargo ships can qualify for the Enterprise Investment Scheme, making it possible for individual investors to access ship ownership as an asset class. [1]

United Kingdom Country in Europe

The United Kingdom, officially the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland but more commonly known as the UK or Britain, is a sovereign country lying off the north-western coast of the European mainland. The United Kingdom includes the island of Great Britain, the north-eastern part of the island of Ireland and many smaller islands. Northern Ireland is the only part of the United Kingdom that shares a land border with another sovereign state‍—‌the Republic of Ireland. Apart from this land border, the United Kingdom is surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, with the North Sea to the east, the English Channel to the south and the Celtic Sea to the south-west, giving it the 12th-longest coastline in the world. The Irish Sea lies between Great Britain and Ireland. With an area of 242,500 square kilometres (93,600 sq mi), the United Kingdom is the 78th-largest sovereign state in the world. It is also the 22nd-most populous country, with an estimated 66.0 million inhabitants in 2017.

The Enterprise Investment Scheme (EIS) is a series of UK Tax reliefs launched in 1994 in succession to the Business Expansion Scheme. It is designed to encourage investments in small unquoted companies carrying on a qualifying trade in the United Kingdom.

Shipping container investments

Investment in shipping containers involves purchasing a container and having an external company manage and lease the containers to merchants. Investors are often promised high rates of return based on purportedly growing demand from cargo ships preferring to lease containers instead of buying them.

The industry is known to have been targeted by scams, particularly in the form of Ponzi schemes. [2] [3]

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Private equity typically refers to investment funds, generally organized as limited partnerships, that buy and restructure companies that are not publicly traded.

Container ship cargo ship

Container ships are cargo ships that carry all of their load in truck-size intermodal containers, in a technique called containerization. They are a common means of commercial intermodal freight transport and now carry most seagoing non-bulk cargo.

Financial services economic service provided by the finance industry

Financial services are the economic services provided by the finance industry, which encompasses a broad range of businesses that manage money, including credit unions, banks, credit-card companies, insurance companies, accountancy companies, consumer-finance companies, stock brokerages, investment funds, individual managers and some government-sponsored enterprises. Financial services companies are present in all economically developed geographic locations and tend to cluster in local, national, regional and international financial centers such as London, New York City, and Tokyo.

Port of Hong Kong port

The Port of Hong Kong, located by the South China Sea, is a deepwater seaport dominated by trade in containerised manufactured products, and to a lesser extent raw materials and passengers. A key factor in the economic development of Hong Kong, the natural shelter and deep waters of Victoria Harbour provide ideal conditions for berthing and the handling of all types of vessels. It is one of the busiest ports in the world, in the three categories of shipping movements, cargo handled and passengers carried.

P&O (company) British shipping and logistics company

P&O was a British shipping and logistics company dating from the early 19th century. Formerly a public company, it was sold to DP World in March 2006 for £3.9 billion. DP World currently operate three P&O branded businesses, P&O Ferries, P&O Maritime and P&O Heritage. P&O Cruises was spun off from P&O in 2000, and is now owned and operated by Carnival Corporation & plc. The former shipping business, P&O Nedlloyd, was bought by and is now part of Maersk Line.

China Shipping Container Lines company

China Shipping Container Lines Co., Ltd, was a containerized marine shipping company, based in Shanghai, China.

Shipbroking is a financial service, which forms part of the global shipping industry. Shipbrokers are specialist intermediaries/negotiators between shipowners and charterers who use ships to transport cargo, or between buyers and sellers of vessels.

Hanjin Shipping defunct container carrier company

Hanjin Shipping Co., Ltd. was a South Korean integrated logistics and container transport company. Prior to its financial demise, Hanjin Shipping was South Korea's largest container line and one of the world's top ten container carriers in terms of capacity.

Social venture capital is a form of investment funding that is usually funded by a group of social venture capitalists or an impact investor to provide seed-funding investment, usually in a for-profit social enterprise, in return to achieve a reasonable gain in financial return while delivering social impact to the world. It deviates from the traditional venture capital model, which focuses on simple risk and reward. However, there are various organizations, such as venture philanthropy companies and nonprofit organizations, that deploy a simple venture capital strategy model to fund nonprofit events, social enterprises, or activities that deliver a high social impact or a strong social causes for their existence. There are also regionally focused organizations that target a specific region of the world, to help build and support the local community in a social cause.

Ceres Hellenic Enterprises is a large traditional Greek ship management company based in Piraeus. It was founded by George Livanos in 1949, but family shipping interests in fact date back to 1824. It is currently run by Peter G. Livanos.

Port security

Port security refers to the defense, law and treaty enforcement, and counterterrorism activities that fall within the port and maritime domain. It includes the protection of the seaports themselves, the protection and inspection of the cargo moving through the ports, and maritime security.

A venture capital trust or VCT is a highly tax efficient UK closed-end collective investment scheme designed to provide private equity capital for small expanding companies, and income and/or capital gains for investors. VCTs are a form of publicly traded private equity, comparable to investment trusts in the UK or business development companies in the United States.

Real estate investing involves the purchase, ownership, management, rental and/or sale of real estate for profit. Improvement of realty property as part of a real estate investment strategy is generally considered to be a sub-specialty of real estate investing called real estate development. Real estate is an asset form with limited liquidity relative to other investments, it is also capital intensive and is highly cash flow dependent. If these factors are not well understood and managed by the investor, real estate becomes a risky investment. The primary cause of investment failure for real estate is that the investor goes into negative cash flow for a period of time that is not sustainable, often forcing them to resell the property at a loss or go into insolvency. A similar practice known as flipping is another reason for failure as the nature of the investment is often associated with short term profit with less effort.

Leaseback, short for "sale-and-leaseback", is a financial transaction in which one sells an asset and leases it back for the long term; therefore, one continues to be able to use the asset but no longer owns it. The transaction is generally done for fixed assets, notably real estate, as well as for durable and capital goods such as airplanes and trains. The concept can also be applied by national governments to territorial assets; prior to the Falklands War, the government of the United Kingdom proposed a leaseback arrangement whereby the Falklands Islands would be transferred to Argentina, with a 99-year leaseback period, and a similar arrangement, also for 99 years, had been in place prior to the handover of Hong Kong to mainland China. Leaseback arrangements are usually employed because they confer financing, accounting or taxation benefits.

China Shipping Development company

China Shipping Development is a Chinese shipping company with its headquarters in Shanghai. The company is listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange and the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.

Libra Group

The Libra Group, aka Libra Holdings, is a privately held international conglomerate operating in a variety of industries. As of 2017, it has 30 subsidiaries across six continents, in six sectors: aviation leasing, renewable energy, hotels and hospitality services, real estate, financial services and diversified investments, and shipping.

Investment fund way of investing money alongside other investors in order to benefit from the inherent advantages of working as part of a group

An investment fund is a way of investing money alongside other investors in order to benefit from the inherent advantages of working as part of a group. These advantages include an ability to:

Traditional investments

In finance, the notion of traditional investments refers to putting money into well-known assets with the expectation of capital appreciation, dividends, and interest earnings. Traditional investments are to be contrasted with alternative investments.

China COSCO Shipping

China COSCO Shipping Corporation Limited, also referred to as the China COSCO Shipping Group or China COSCO Shipping, is a Chinese business conglomerate and state-owned enterprise headquartered in Shanghai. The group is engaged in a variety of business sectors, with a focus on integrated logistics, shipping, finance services, and equipment manufacturing. The company was formed by the merger of the COSCO Group and the China Shipping Group in January 2016. The merger was precipitated by an ongoing downturn in the containerized-ocean-freight and break bulk shipping industries that stymied the profits of both groups and motivated them to unite and endure the decline together. The merged entity is composed of several business clusters each of which is managed by one or more subsidiaries. Its core business cluster is container, dry-bulk, and petroleum transport services.

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