KG and KS Ship Funds
The German Kommanditgesellschaft and Norwegian Kommandittselskap ship-owning partnerships, their retail capital model, and their contraction after 2008.
A KG fund is a ship-owning partnership organised as a German Kommanditgesellschaft, a limited partnership pairing a general partner with unlimited liability against limited partners whose exposure is capped at their subscribed contribution. A KS fund is the Norwegian equivalent, a Kommandittselskap. Both pooled private investor capital into ships that were then chartered out to operating shipping companies.
The two are distinct national vehicles and neither is Japanese, a confusion that recurs in trade writing because all three jurisdictions produced investor-funded tonnage-providing structures at around the same time. The Japanese structure is the operating lease, including the JOLCO . German KG ship funds raised retail money on a domestic tax basis and contracted sharply after the 2008 to 2009 financial crisis.
The full article will cover the partnership mechanics and the role of the emissionshaus, the tax treatment that drove retail subscription, the charter structures the funds used, the losses of the post-2008 period and what replaced the model, and the distinction from the Norwegian KS and from lessor-owned structures such as sale and leaseback .