Investment, financing and mergers & acquisitions in the shipping industry

This thesis provides the comprehensive understanding of investment, financing and mergers and acquisitions (M&As) in the shipping industry in three in-depth analyses. The first section of the thesis aims to document the evolution and the development in the shipping finance and investment literature by providing a comprehensive review of all existing research in the areas of (a) sources of finance and capital structure in shipping, (b) shipping investment and valuation, (c) corporate governance of shipping companies, and (d) risk measurement and management in shipping. For this purpose, a structured investigation of 137 papers published in 43 scholarly journals during the past four decades (1979-2017) has been performed. Bibliometric analysis shows that shipping finance and investment literature has expanded its scope since 1990s covering a variety of emerging research topics (including M&As), largely triggered by profound changes in business practice in the shipping industry, through interdisciplinary and international collaborations. In addition, content analysis highlights that findings in the shipping finance and investment literature provide valuable insights into characteristics in financial management of shipping companies in terms of highly leveraged capital structure, diversification of financing sources, investment decision, risk-return profile, value creation from M&As and gradual shift in corporate governance. Furthermore, the literature survey critically discusses research gaps, puzzling anomalies and under-explored areas providing promising directions of future research in this area. The second section of the thesis examines one of the most important angles of shipping investment documented in the review of the literature: inorganic investment. The aim is to draw the broad map of shipping M&A activity and to highlight the characteristics of this multi-faceted market using an extensive and global sample of 2,261 deals consummated by shipping companies during 1990-2014. Especially, considering drawbacks of classification in the extant shipping M&A research, all shipping M&A deals in the sample are partitioned into a new industrial segmentation reflecting actual business areas of acquiring and target firms. The results indicate that M&As play a key role in shaping the current shipping industry through both horizontal and vertical consolidation. The results also document the significance of cross-border deals as well as traditional European and emerging Asian initiatives in the shipping M&A market. In addition, the investigation of determinants of acquisition premium reveals that premium is negatively associated with the size and stock valuation of target firms. Furthermore, using the Tobit and the logit models, I analyse the choice of payment method in shipping M&As. The results show that the use of cash in shipping M&As is negatively associated with the deals size, but positively with acquirer size. Finally, as a follow-up to the second section, the third section of the thesis investigates the valuation effects of shipping M&As. The results suggest that both acquiring and target firms achieve positive shareholder returns, measured in 5-day Cumulative Abnormal Returns (CARs) around the announcement date, with statistical significance. The analysis also highlights several characteristics of value creation drivers in the shipping M&A market, such as, positive announcement returns in acquisitions of publicly listed targets and in stock-financed deals, outperformance of cross-border deals compared to domestic transactions, and the negative impact of the size of constituent firms. Overall, this thesis offers an extensive insight on investment, financing and M&A activity in the shipping industry from various perspectives ranging from the evolution of research contributions to empirical evidence on deal- and firm- characteristics and the value creation effect. The comprehensive synthesis of shipping finance and investment research findings offers invaluable information for understanding financial management in the shipping industry and shapes the future research topics in this area. Further, findings on shipping M&As based on the actual business areas of involved firms provide a comprehensive overview of the multi-faceted consolidation market that is largely driven by industry-specific factors

Improved Image Analysis for Measuring Gastric Ulcer Index in Animal Models and Clinical Diagnostic Data

Gastric ulcers are one of the most common gastrointestinal diseases. In this study, as an attempt to reduce the minimal error in clinical observations during the diagnosis of gastric ulcers, the applicability of improved ImageJ analysis (IA) was investigated by comparing the results of animal experiments and clinical data. As a result, IA exhibited a significantly improved potential for determining the ulcer index (UI) of clinical data sheets compared to those rated directly by conventional clinical observation (CCO). This indicated that IA enhanced the reproducibility of the measurement of gastric UI using a Bland–Altman plot, resulting in a reduced deviation of each UI value. In addition, it was confirmed that errors in gastric UI decisions can be reduced by adjusting RGB values in diagnostic clinical data (i.e., adjusting to 100 is relatively better than adjusting to 50 or 200). Together, these results suggest that the new enhanced IA could be compatible with novel applications for measuring and evaluating gastric ulcers in clinical settings, meaning that the developed method could be used not only as an auxiliary tool for CCO, but also as a pipeline for ulcer diagnosis

Transportation CO₂ emission decoupling: An assessment of the Eurasian logistics corridor

The Eurasian logistics corridor is as important transportation hub delivering goods and services to countries along the belt and road. While greatly promoting the economic and social development of countries in the region, the corridor also presents enormous energy consumption and CO₂ emission challenges. In order to assess these demands, our study combines the Tapio de-coupling model and the logarithmic mean divisia index (LMDI) to analyze the relationship be-tween transportation sector development and CO₂ emissions. Our study shows that transportation-intensity effect is the main driving force behind CO₂ emission reductions in developed countries, while the energy-intensity effect is key to reducing transportation CO₂ emissions in developing countries. Moreover, we demonstrated that carbon- and transportation-intensity effects inhibit transportation CO₂ emissions, while the factors of economic structure and population size help to increase transportation CO₂ emission levels. Finally, our research provides an important reference for economies seeking to develop greener transportation sectors

Tunable plasmonic nanocavity with Ge₂Sb₂Te₅ film for directional launching of surface plasmons

A tunable plasmonic nanocavity which consists of a metallic groove with submerged ultra-thin Ge2Sb2Te5 film is proposed for controlling the on/off characteristics of directional surface plasmon polaritions (SPPs) launching. Different mechanisms of launching SPPs using two orthogonal incident polarizations are investigated to reveal the SPP generation characteristics from the proposed nanocavity. By choosing the appropriate position of Ge2Sb2Te5 film, we report that the directional launching characteristics of SPPs can be controlled by changing the phase state of extremely small volume of Ge2Sb2Te5 film, which shows up to 37 dB of extinction ratio changing characteristics.</p

Xanthomonas oryzae pv. oryzae type III effector XopN targets OsVOZ2 and a putative thiamine synthase as a virulence factor in rice.

Xanthomonasoryzae pv. oryzae (Xoo) is spread systemically through the xylem tissue and causes bacterial blight in rice. We evaluated the roles of Xanthomonas outer proteins (Xop) in the Xoo strain KXO85 in a Japonica-type rice cultivar, Dongjin. Five xop gene knockout mutants (xopQ KXO85 , xopX KXO85 , xopP1 KXO85 , xopP2 KXO85 , and xopN KXO85 ) were generated by EZ-Tn5 mutagenesis, and their virulence was assessed in 3-month-old rice leaves. Among these mutants, the xopN KXO85 mutant appeared to be less virulent than the wild-type KXO85; however, the difference was not statistically significant. In contrast, the xopN KXO85 mutant exhibited significantly less virulence in flag leaves after flowering than the wild-type KXO85. These observations indicate that the roles of Xop in Xoo virulence are dependent on leaf stage. We chose the xopN gene for further characterization because the xopN KXO85 mutant showed the greatest influence on virulence. We confirmed that XopNKXO85 is translocated into rice cells, and its gene expression is positively regulated by HrpX. Two rice proteins, OsVOZ2 and a putative thiamine synthase (OsXNP), were identified as targets of XopNKXO85 by yeast two-hybrid screening. Interactions between XopNKXO85 and OsVOZ2 and OsXNP were further confirmed in planta by bimolecular fluorescence complementation and in vivo pull-down assays. To investigate the roles of OsVOZ2 in interactions between rice and Xoo, we evaluated the virulence of the wild-type KXO85 and xopN KXO85 mutant in the OsVOZ2 mutant line PFG_3A-07565 of Dongjin. The wild-type KXO85 and xopN KXO85 mutant were significantly less virulent in the mutant rice line. These results indicate that XopNKXO85 and OsVOZ2 play important roles both individually and together for Xoo virulence in rice

Evaluation of visible fluorescent elastomer tags implanted in marine medaka, Oryzias dancena

Abstract The aim of this study was to assess visible implant fluorescent elastomer (VIE) tagging and stress response in marine medaka, Oryzias dancena. The experimental fish were anesthetized individually and marked with red, yellow, or green elastomer at each of the following three body locations: (1) the abdomen, (2) the back, and (3) the caudal vasculature. During 12 months, the accumulated survival rates of fish in the experimental treatments were not different among red, yellow, and green elastomers. The experimental fish retained > 85% of the tags injected in the back, > 70% of the tags injected in the caudal vasculature, and > 60% of the tags injected in the abdomen (P < 0.05). An important observation was that the abdomen site was associated with poor tag retention. For all injected sites, the red and green tags were able to be detected more easily than the yellow tags when observed under both visible and UV lights. Tag readability was lower for the abdomen site than for the other sites (back and caudal vasculature). Thus, VIE tags were easy to apply to marine medaka (< 1 min per fish) and were readily visible when viewed under UV light