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SeaTiger Capital, a venture-capital outfit recently formed by Hong Kong's Tiger Group Investments and New York-listed Seacor Holdings, has created a war chest worth about US$100 million to invest in the offshore shipping sector.
Senior partner Julian Proctor said more cash would be made available if the right investments were proposed. 'Seacor has several billion dollars of cash,' he said, adding that Tiger Group's own backers had 'very deep' pockets.
Tiger Group is closely linked to and helped create New York-listed shipping group Seaspan Corp, which has been instrumental in expanding the vessel fleets of Cosco Container Lines (Coscon) and China Shipping Container Lines.  
This was done through a series of long-term lease deals in which Seaspan acquired or placed orders for ships at Asian shipyards and chartered them to Coscon, CSCL and other owners.
Seaspan currently owns more than 60 ships that are on long-term charter.
Proctor said that while the cash available so far had come from Tiger Group and Seacor, he did not rule out the possibility of outside investors, including individuals and firms from Hong Kong and Asia, being invited to participate.
'We may go and raise third-party money in six months, but we don't want to put the cart before the horse,' he said. 'If it works, great; if it doesn't, we will plod along.'
Proctor, who is also managing director of Tiger Group, said SeaTiger would mainly target investments in Europe's offshore shipping sector because offshore offered better returns than the traditional shipping sectors such as container and bulk operations. He added there was also a lack of liquidity in the European banking industry to support the offshore shipping sector.
Asked if SeaTiger would consider financing specialist ships involved in offshore wind farm and renewable energy development, Proctor said the focus would be on oil-related industries.
This would include providing finance for the construction or purchase of oil rigs and higher-value offshore vessels such as floating oil storage tankers, anchor handling vessels and diving support ships.
SeaTiger partner Christoph de Buys Roessingh confirmed that 'close to US$100 million' had been put up between Seacor and Tiger Group. He said several financing options were being made available, including mezzanine  debt and equity. 'We are very flexible. We will still focus on assets,' he said.
SeaTiger, which will mainly operate from offices in Hong Kong and New York, will also consider investing in post-restructured or operationally sound public and private companies that are undervalued or poorly capitalised.



SeaTiger builds US$100m war chest for offshore shipping push