The Hong Kong-based firm, with assets of more than $10 billion, looks to raise as much as $6 billion to invest in shipping over the next few years through its companies, said Tiger Group's Managing Director Julian Proctor.
The investment firm, a major shareholder in New York-listed Seaspan and six other maritime firms, is mainly targeting opportunities in the box ship industry.
It does not see much growth in the near term for the oil tanker or dry bulk sectors, which are both struggling with an oversupply of vessels and rock-bottom freight rates.
"Across the various businesses that we have, we could very easily be ordering 30 to 50 ships over the next 24 months," Julian Proctor, Tiger Group's managing director, told Reuters on the sidelines of an industry conference in Singapore.
"We think there is good value in large containerships of the right type and right technology. That same proposition is not currently in place in the dry or wet sector at the moment," he added, referring to the dry bulk and oil tanker markets.
In today's prices, 50 new containerships of 8,800 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) would cost around $4.75 billion, according to Clarkson Research.
Organic Growth
Proctor indicated the containerships would probably be purchased through companies already in its portfolio and not by new acquisitions.
"We are going to continue to organically grow the businesses we already have. We will look at inorganic growth on an opportunistic basis," Proctor said.
Tiger Group's flagship containership company, Seaspan, now owns nearly 70 box ships that are leased on long-term contracts to mainly Chinese maritime firms, such as China COSCO and China Shipping Container Lines .
The private equity firm, founded in 1994, is also a major shareholder in Shanghai-based vessel owner Greathorse Shipping, investment firm SeaTiger Capital, and Seabridge Marine -- a heavy lift transport company for the oilfield service sector.
Its latest company, Greater China Intermodal Investments (GCI), is a joint venture with private equity firm Carlyle, formed in March with an initial five-year investment of $900 million.
"We have invested a good amount of that equity. In terms of our buying power, depending on credit market conditions, we could be between $4 billion to $6 billion in assets," Proctor said.
GCI last month ordered seven 10,000 TEU containerships to be built by Yangzijiang Shipbuilding for delivery 2014 and 2015. The vessels will be chartered by South Korea's Hanjin Shipping . (Reuters)
