It is not only ship charterers that will default on shipping trusts.
Back in the hey day when Pacific shipping trust, First Ship Lease Trust and Rickmers Maritime was suffering when their ship charterers was defaulting on the ships owned by them, the prevalent message was don’t buy ships but stick to real estate trust. Or even worse, don’t buy business trust, only buy real estate investment trust (REIT).
I would like to think of it in another way: there will come a time when property in Singapore is in a rut, and then you will perhaps see the same kind of incidents happening.
We don’t have to wait long to see a REIT looking as bad as the shipping trusts during some of their worse days. Sabana was the first one to show signs that if the management is not up to it, in a challenging segment, the ......