<\/p>\n
The loan, secured from a consortium of banks comprising BNP Paribas, HSBC and Soci\u00e9t\u00e9 G\u00e9n\u00e9rale, has an initial one-year maturity and an extension option of up to five years, Marseille-based CMA CGM said in a statement on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
France is offering guarantees to support billions of euros in loans for French companies to help them survive the economic fallout from the novel coronavirus.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cThis new funding further strengthens CMA CGM\u2019s cash position in order to confront uncertainties in the global economy resulting from the health crisis,\u201d the group said.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Privately held CMA CGM, which is controlled by the founding Saade family, said it expects a 10% fall in market volumes in the first half of 2020 versus a year earlier.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
A spokesman added that the group was experiencing a contraction in container shipping volumes in line with this market trend.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Container shipping market leader Maersk said on Wednesday it now expected global demand in the sector to contract this year, after previously forecasting 1%-3% growth, and warned volumes in the second quarter could decline by as much as a quarter.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
CMA CGM had said in early March it expected a limited impact on its operations this year from the coronavirus, as activity resumed in China after an initial outbreak there.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The virus has since spread across the world, particularly affecting Western Europe and the United States.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
CMA CGM posted a net loss last year and has been trying to reduce its debt burden following the takeover of Swiss firm CEVA Logistics, aimed at expanding its presence in non-maritime transport.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
CEVA was facing a downturn in many business sectors it serves, although it was seeing short-term demand for transporting medical supplies like masks, including through airlifts between China and France, the spokesman said, declining to give an estimate of CEVA\u2019s level of activity.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
($1 = 0.9219 euros) (Reporting by Sudip Kar-Gupta and Gus Trompiz; editing by Jason Neely and Steve Orlofsky)<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
(c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2019.<\/em><\/p>\n gCaptain<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The loan, secured from a consortium of banks comprising BNP Paribas, HSBC and Soci\u00e9t\u00e9 G\u00e9n\u00e9rale, has an initial one-year maturity and an extension option of up to five years, Marseille-based CMA CGM said in a statement on Wednesday. France is offering guarantees to support billions of euros in loans for French companies to help them …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9769,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[2068,282,512,1154,668,1456,1380,6215,1752],"class_list":["post-9768","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-marine-world","tag-billion","tag-cgm","tag-cma","tag-covid19","tag-french","tag-funds","tag-loan","tag-scheme","tag-taps"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9768","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9768"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9768\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/9769"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9768"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9768"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9768"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}