Fairfax investing another $500 million in Seaspan

Seaspan says deal will bolster its strategy to lead consolidation in containership sector.    Seaspan Corp. said that Fairfax Financial Holdings Ltd. has entered into an agreement to invest an additional $500 million in Seaspan by exercising two tranches of warrants, increasing Fairfax’s total investment in the containership owning and chartering company to $1 billion.
   David Sokol, chairman of Seaspan, said the investment will “bolster Seaspan’s strategy to lead consolidation in the fragmented containership sector and capitalize on the most compelling opportunities in the shipping sector and beyond it.”
   The deal will “significantly strengthen Seaspan’s balance sheet, significantly improve access to capital and accelerate our progress toward achieving an investment grade credit rating.”
    Prem Watsa, the chairman and chief executive officer of Toronto-based Fairfax, said, “As the global containership industry continues to consolidate, we believe owner-operators like Seaspan, with financially sound balance sheets, will have excellent growth prospects.” He added, “This transaction represents one of Fairfax’s largest investments in a public company.”
   Watsa sometimes has been called the “Canadian Warren Buffett” because of his investing acumen, and he told the Bloomberg news service that he was making the additional investment in Seaspan primarily based on the track record of Sokol, the former chairman of the utility operations of Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway.
   Using warrants it acquired earlier this year, Seaspan will acquire 38.46 million shares of Seaspan’s Class A stock for $6.50 per share on July 16 and then do a similar transaction in January 2019 for a total of $500 million.
   Seaspan operates a fleet of 112 ships with aggregate capacity of more than 900,000 TEUs.