YieldStreet, an online marketplace for a diverse array of asset-backed investments, announced on Monday it is launching Marine Finance as a new asset class. According to YieldStreet, Marine Finance focuses on financing vessel acquisitions for the spot market, time charters or bareboat charters, as well as the construction of workboats, and to finance the acquisition of vessels for scrapping.
The marketplace reported that the first Marine Finance offering has had a very strong investor response. More than $10 million has already been reportedly committed across hundreds of investors. In fact, this offering marks the highest volume of total investors in a single offering in YieldStreet’s history, further nodding to the company’s mission of ‘Prosperity for All’. Michael Weisz, President and Founder of YieldStreet, stated:
“Technology is the greatest equalizer and the power of individuals making their own investment decisions has been underestimated for too long, as demonstrated by our engaged investor base. YieldStreet is committed to its mission to enable individuals to build wealth via a truly diversified portfolio of alternative assets. By marrying technology and data together with sophisticated structuring and George’s experience, we are able to offer flexible capital to originators in the Marine industry, which we expect will be up to $250M of investments in this asset class by the end of 2018.”
George Cambanis, the founding partner and former CEO of Deloitte Greece is joining YieldStreet as the Managing Director of Marine Finance. Cambanis then added:
“I could not have imagined a better way to put my 40 years of Marine industry experience behind a mission like YieldStreet. To provide investors access to highly structured opportunities in this global industry for the first time is game-changing.”