Shipping & Oil Services

Our practice encompasses all the leading maritime sectors, dry cargo vessels, bulk carriers, reefers, Ro-Ros and container vessels, liquid cargo vessels, crude carriers, product carriers, chemical carriers and liquefied gas carriers, and specialized cargo ships, passenger vessels, livestock carriers, heavy lift vessels and tugs.

As with any true shipping firm, claims form a key part of our practice. Our dispute team advises on all types of wet and dry disputes, admiralty and casualty response, collisions, groundings, pollution and salvage, charterparty disputes, cargo claims, ship sale sand purchase and shipbuilding disputes, marine insurance, sanctions and regulatory compliance. We have strong relations with the leading P&I clubs in Norway, Sweden and the UK, a strong presence in the Greek market, a commodities practice that represents some of the largest commodity traders in the world, and relations worldwide.

Unusually (and we would say uniquely), we are not either a "claims" practice or a finance and corporate practice. Instead, we offer clients in the maritime industry a true "cradle to grave" service covering all their contracting, trading, financing and corporate requirements.

For commercial contracts, we are experienced in advising on and negotiating shipbuilding, ship conversion and repair contracts with all the leading Far Eastern and European shipyards, second-hand sale and purchase agreements, long and short-term time, bareboat and voyage charters, contracts of affreightment, joint ventures, pooling agreements, bills of lading and ship recycling agreements.

Our commodities practice covers sale and offtake agreements, long term SPAs, MSAs and spot sale agreements for most of the leading commodities including LNG, crude oil and petroleum products, coal, metals and soft commodities, and the interaction between these and the shipping arrangements. Our expertise lies in combining our experience of these sale and offtake arrangements with the shipping contracts with which they are so closely entwined.

Our finance lawyers are experienced in the most complex forms of syndicated and structured asset-backed, trade and project financing for these types of vessels and trades, and our corporate lawyers have been involved in some of the largest acquisitions, divestments and restructuring in these sectors in recent years.