Shaerf named director of New York Maritime

Shaerf named director of New York Maritime    Peter Shaerf, a managing director of the investment bank AMA Capital Partners LLC, which specializes in the shipping industry, has been elected chairman of the board of New York Maritime Inc. (NYMAR).
   Shaerf takes over the reins from Bill Honan, an attorney with the firm of Holland and Knight.
   NYMAR is a member-based association of maritime companies in the New York area whose goal is to promote the benefits of the region as a maritime business center, and he said he hoped to better market New York as a shipping capital.
   “New York is clearly the capital center for the shipping industry,” Shaerf said. “There is an abundance of capital here —    maritime public companies have a market cap of over $100 billion — and an abundance of liquidity with $300 billion of public shipping stocks traded in 2007. We also boast the largest stock exchanges in the world (NYSE and NASDAQ), not to mention a proliferation of investment banks, commercial lenders, and home to a dynamic and prosperous private equity community that has completed over $3 billion of transactions in the industry in the past two years.”