Should a public shipping company be a pure play — owning just tankers, containers, bulkers or gas carriers — or should it do as the traditional private family shipowners do, and own a mixed fleet?
The answer is important: It affects how attractive a shipping stock is to investors, and in the case of extreme rate troughs, it affects the chances a public company can avoid restructuring or insolvency.
Shipping’s pure-play-versus-mixed-fleet debate has been ongoing for more than a decade, and in...