WORLD CLASS BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE - EXPERT IN MARITIME PROJECT ANALYSIS AND SHIPPING ECONOMICS -  SERVING INVESTORS, LAW FIRMS, FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS, IR and PR PROFESSIONALS

Hedge funds and Private equity funds are taking a close look at maritime investments. bdp1 Consulting Ltd has provided guidance to some of the leading financial players in the business.

bdp1 Consulting Ltd. is staffed by a group of people with years of operating and management backgrounds in the transportation business.  Our business intelligence assignments have let us englighten them about both qualitative and quantitative aspects of the  shipping business. We are still called upon for freight and finance assignments, and we analyze investments for transaction negotiation and management decision making. We help our freight and finance clients optimize and smooth volatility, while increasing revenues and reducing costs. Most of the financial engineering assignments have involved the use of energy and/ or freight derivatives, offering powerful ways to better define, atomize, and manage risk.

We have also studied the economics of facilities to support cost / benefit analysis. Hedge funds, private equity/ infrastructure players and the commercial banks, investment banks and others who serve them, have benefited from our insightful guidance.

View a brochure for an Informa Agri-Economis Conference in which bdp1 Consulting was to give a seminar re freight.

As we are prone to do, we use graphics to illustrate concepts- the images below show vessel pictures overlayed to evoke our mindset into the minds of potential clients, who routinely ask us questions about maritime economics.

Maritime Financial Engineering and Deal Structuring

Analysis and Presentations re Maritime and Energy Supply and Demand

OUR EMPHASIS : CASH FLOW IS KING
In shipping projects, cash flows are the most critical concern- will there be enough cash available to service debts, to maintain required reserves, to reward equity investors with returns. We work with our clients to construct and present realistic scenarios.

-EXPERT WITNESS and litigation support for lawyers (was the ship really earning $44,000 per day?). We have assisted, as expert witness, in the valuation of both assets and freight markets at particular points in time.

-Freight market analysis for investment bankers (example: what is the market contour for product tankers in offshore trades?). Such earnings scenarios can then be input into both asset and company valuations.

Barry Parker's articles on topics such as ship finance, hedging strategies, and even "residual value futures" and ways to protect ship values, have been published widely. His work has supported the closing of numerous shipping transactions, the smooth running of maritime businesses and the forensic investigation into the arcane world of cash flows for maritime companies. 

We are called upon to develop freight and energy hedging strategies (as discussed in a separate page), and engineer and reverse engineer financial packages for shipping (tanker, drybulk, container, gas carriers).  We have worked on financial modelling  in  connection with  capital raises for both public and private markets.

WHAT ABOUT FORECASTING?
Forecasting is not our main emphasis- though some of our clients are heavily into forecasting. Our approach is to develop a variety of scenarios, emphasizing the downside. We have been involved in efforts to forecast freight rates and asset values, but our batting average (while perhaps better than some others) has not been encouraging. Therefore, we take the view that protecting the downside (worst case) scenario, perhaps with hedges, as shown below, or simply through a tight overall deal structure, is the way to go. 

Link to Barry Parker article on futures trading that appeared in Fairplay Magazine in late 1987, prior to the advent of FFAs.