Was this a panel of investment bankers or a running of the bulls? A little of both broke out on Tuesday during the second day of the annual Marine Money Week conference as the finance men declared capital markets “wide open” to shipowners, at long last.

Leading the charge was Jefferies shipping banker Doug Mavrinac, whose busy 2021 has included work on International Seaways pending acquisition of Diamond S Shipping, Israeli liner company Zim’s New York initial public offering and Taylor Maritime’s dry bulk IPO in London. “We’ve done six deals in the last six months,” Mavrinac told viewers of the session, held online as New York continues its recovery from Covid-19. “To me that’s very different from trying to squeeze into a narrow window in 2019 or 2014 when the worry was sucking all of the air out of the room. The environment is such that investors are now making money again betting on shipping, which they haven’t in a very long time.”

Taylor Maritime’s deal was the first big shipping IPO in London since 2017, while Zim’s flotation was the first mainstream shipping debut in New York since 2015. With each successful deal, investors are growing more confident in a broad-based industry recovery that already has featured containerships and bulkers, and eventually will extend to tankers, he said. “It’s not a head fake, this is real,” Mavrinac said of the stronger rates environment.

Mavrinac drew support from counterpart Chris Weyers of Stifel, who said long-only investors are coming back into the sector. “There’s been a big institutional movement into shipping,” Weyers said. “Names like Fidelity, Wellington and Putnam are spending a lot of time and investing in the stocks – primarily dry bulk, but they’re also spending time on tankers. We haven’t seen institutions look at the sector in a long time.”

Checking in from across the Atlantic was Marius Halvorsen, who recently emerged as head of investment banking at Oslo’s Arctic Securities. He confirmed that happy days were back in the Norwegian market as well. “Our trading volumes are up significantly from a year ago,” he said, with mostly hedge funds getting involved on the equity side. “They are companies paid to take risks,” he said.

On the other hand, a recent bond deal by Greek bulker owner Diana Shipping was oversubscribed by a crowd of mostly long-only funds, including high-worth family offices, he said. The deal initially targeted $100m at 8.5% interest, but was upsized to $125m at 8.375%. About 35% of the interest came from Nordic investors, 25% from the US and the remainder split about equally from the UK, Asia and elsewhere in Europe.

Given the current climate, Weyers said he has been a bit surprised that more listed owners haven’t looked to raise cash in secondary offerings. “I agree with Doug that the markets are open to the right companies. I’m guessing that in the second half of the year we’ll see more capital raising,” Weyers said.

From Mavrinac’s view, there is no question there will be more capital markets activity coming in the year’s back half. “The markets are wide open and they will remain wide open,” Mavrinac said. “Investors have made money and the fundamentals are attractive. It’s been an active year, and I think it’s going to remain active. Even for the tanker guys, I think their time will come, and I think we’ll see more M&A activity as well.”