Container shipping slump stings German investors

If there’s one kind of shipping investor that it is difficult not to feel rather sorry for, it is the thousands of private KG investors in Germany. Known in German shipping circles as “dentist owners”, due to the high proportion of dentists which invested their pension funds in container vessels, the so-called Kommanditgesellschaft were closed-end funds operating like mini-companies set up to own one vessel at a time; investors receiving payments from charter fees and the eventual sale of the vessel at ...