Good morning ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Genco Shipping & Trading Limited fourth quarter 2008 earnings conference call and presentation. Before we begin, please note that there will be a slide presentation accompanying today's conference call. That presentation can be obtained from Genco's web site at www.gencoshipping.com. (Operator Instructions) A replay of the conference will be accessible anytime during the next two weeks through March 13, 2009 by dialing 888-203-1112 or 719-457-0820 and entering the pass code 5464610. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to the company. Please go ahead.

Good morning. Before we begin our presentation, I note that in this conference call, we will be making certain forward-looking statements that discuss future events and performance. These statements are subject to risk and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ from the forward-looking statements. For a discussion of factors that could cause results to differ, please see the company's press release that was issued yesterday, the materials relating to this call posted on the company's website, and the company's filings with the SEC, including without limitation the company's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2007, and the company's subsequent reports filed with the SEC. At this time, I would like to introduce Mr. Gerry Buchanan, the President of Genco Shipping & Trading.

Good morning and welcome to Genco’s fourth quarter 2008 conference call. With me today is Peter Georgiopoulos, our Chairman, and John Wobensmith, our Chief Financial Officer. I will begin today’s call by discussing our fourth quarter and year to date highlights as outlined on slide three of the presentation. I will then turn the call over to John to review our financial results for the three and 12-month period ended December 31, 2008. Following this I will discuss the industry’s current fundamentals. John, Peter, and I will then be happy to take your questions. During the fourth quarter Genco once again drew up its significant time charter coverage with high quality charters to deliver strong financial results for shareholders despite a volatile and challenging drybulk market. Turning to slide five, for the fourth quarter excluding unusual events net income was $48.4 million or $1.55 basic and diluted earnings per share. Including unusual events we recorded a net loss of $111.3 million or $3.56 basic and diluted loss per share for the fourth quarter of 2008. During the fourth quarter we took delivery of the Genco Hadrian, a Capesize new building which commenced a long-term time charter with Cargill International SA for 46 to 62 months at a gross rate of $65,000 per day plus 50% index based profit sharing component. Through management’s efforts to ensure the timely delivery of the Genco Hadrian to its charterer, we enabled the Genco Hadrian to enter the market at a favorable rate. During a time when management had a large number of its vessels secured on attractive contracts with well-known multinational companies, we took active measures to enhance the company’s financial flexibility and ability to emerge from the current market environment as an industry bell [inaudible]. First we made the strategic decision to cancel…

Thank you Gerald, I will begin my remarks by directing you to slide nine which presents our financial results for the fourth quarter and 12 months ended December 31, 2008. For the three and 12 month period ended December 31, 2008 we recorded revenues of $101.6 million and $405.4 million respectively. This compares with revenues for the fourth quarter of 2007 and 12 months ended December 31, 2007 of $65.7 million and $185.4 million respectively. The year over year increases were due to the operation of a larger fleet as well as the renewal of our time charters at higher rates then those contracted previously. Operating income for the fourth quarter and 12 month period ended December 31, 2008 was $7.7 million and $234.4 million respectively. This compares with operating income for the fourth quarter and 12 month period ended December 31, 2007 of $65.2 million and $131.7 million respectively. The full year increase in operating income is attributable to higher revenues partially offset by increased vessel operating expense, general and administrative expenses, management fees, as well as depreciation and amortization associated with the operation of a larger fleet. Interest expense for the fourth quarter of 2008 was $17.2 million and $52.6 million for the 12 month period ended December 31, 2008. This compares to interest expense of $8.8 million for the fourth quarter of 2007 and $26.5 million for the year ended December 31, 2007. Excluding unusual events totaling $159.7 million which I will discuss in more detail later on the call, net income was $48.4 million or $1.55 basic and diluted earnings per share for the fourth quarter of 2008. Including unusual events the company recorded a net loss for the fourth quarter of 2008 of $111.3 million or $3.56 basic and diluted loss per share. Net income…

Thank you John, I will now take this opportunity to spend a few moments discussing the industry fundamentals. I’ll start on slide 18 where we’ve attempted to explain the major reasons for the significant decline in freight rates beginning during the summer of 2008. After a continuous increase in rates during the first half of 2008 and the BDI reaching a high of 11,600 points, the freight rate environment experienced a decline mainly due to the following factors. First steel mills in Beijing and other Chinese cities, where the 2008 Olympics were held, were asked to stop operations for 60 days beginning the end of July in order to reduce pollution during the Olympic Games. Concurrently some of the smaller sized mills were forced to halt production due to increasing prices of raw materials, namely [inaudible] coal and iron ore which limited their ability to continue profitable operations in a short-term. Following the completion of the Olympics and further extended [inaudible] cutbacks, efforts to impose a 10% to 12% incremental increase to already negotiated ore prices resulted in reduced shipments of Brazilian ore to China during September and October of 2008. During October of 2008 the emergence of the global credit crisis not only effected worldwide trade by reducing overall demand but also significantly effected the drybulk industry in particular since companies found it increasingly difficult to obtain trade credit in order to deliver cargos thereby reducing the short-term demand for vessels. As a result of these events as well as announcements from certain Chinese steel mills regarding a 10% to 20% production cut, we saw an increase in iron ore inventories at Chinese ports. Since the beginning of the year a number of industry specific factors have had a positive effect on the market as follows. First decreasing iron…

(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from the line of Doug Mavrinac – Jefferies & Co. Doug Mavrinac – Jefferies & Co.: I just had a few questions for you, first and you touched on it a little bit but I just want a little bit of clarity, over the past couple of weeks, since a competitor announced that two of its counter parties have not performed on a performed on its time charter contracts, there seems to be a resurgence in the equity markets related to worries of contract cancellations as though there’s been this resurgence in contract cancellations and I believe you mentioned this but I just wanted you to confirm it that all of your counter parties with the exception Samsung Logic which you provided an update on a while back, that all the other counter parties are current on their payments and whether or not you’ve even received renegotiation requests from your other counter parties as it relates to the terms of their contracts.

No everything is current and we’ve received no requests for renegotiation and additionally let me just say one other thing because you know we do a lot of credit work and we’re very picky with who we charter our ships to, the Samsung charter was a charter that we inherited when we bought a fleet of ships. It was a charter that someone else had negotiated so it’s a charter that probably if we had done it ourselves would not have put the ship on to, its just when you buy a package you’ve got, the other ships were charter free, this one had a charter on it, we took it with the package. Doug Mavrinac – Jefferies & Co.: And if I’m not mistaken, is that the one that you mentioned that you may have been a little worried about because you inherited during the third quarter earnings call.

Absolutely so, if you think about it we’ve been telling you for a long time that we’ve been worried about this and we kept our eye on it so, we’re here to keep you informed and as you just said we did it during the third quarter call. If we were concerned about something else we’d be telling you that today and we’re not. Doug Mavrinac – Jefferies & Co.: The vessels that have yet to be chartered for 2009, you are I think in a good position because you have a significant amount of contracted cash flow, your CapEx is already funded, and you have minimal debt repayment obligations, how do you think about chartering out those ships that have yet to be chartered in terms of the timing given the really, the lack of not needing to do it anytime soon, so the timing, the contract duration, your counter party selection, etc.

I think its all a matter of in this kind of market trying to be opportunistic. If we do see a flip up in the market and there’s an opportunity to put things away at a number, we would do it and if it was a good number, we’d do it for as long as we could. As you know we’ve always been a little bit conservative and that’s why in this downturn the company is still very strong and in good shape and with our debt we got ahead of that curve. We’re not like other companies who are right now trying to renegotiate their debt. Ours has been fixed for awhile now so we try and get ahead of all these things and that’s why we think that we’ll have smooth sailing for the rest of the year. Doug Mavrinac – Jefferies & Co.: We’ve seen not only stabilization in the dry bulk shipping market but actual improvement in the market given the lack of destocking we’ve done with that and now we’re actually seeing demand picking back up, can you share with us how you see that translate in terms of asset values for dry bulk vessels, if they’ve shown that’s a similar stabilization and improvement.

Yes, I think they have, if you think about what happens during the fourth quarter, the way the stocks went, every day you’d come in and you’d see big chunks down in the market. You saw the same thing with asset values. I think that in the first quarter that has sort of stopped and we’ve actually probably seen even a little bit of a bounce, ships that maybe we had looked at let’s say a month ago, I think are probably 10% higher today, so, 8 to 10% higher.

And there’s been liquidity coming back into the market. There’s obviously been vessel transactions that have been done which is positive.

And this is just sort of second hand, you can go check this out but there was a ship finance conference in Germany this week and both HSH, Norbank, got up and [inaudible] publically and said that, in both cases where the 50% of the banks’ business is international shipping, that’s what they’re in the business to do and there have been big injections from the German government into both those banks and we start seeing the effects of that liquidity entering the market this year. So its anecdotal but its something that we heard this morning and you can go run down that story.

Your next question comes from the line of Urs Dur – Lazard Capital Urs Dur – Lazard Capital : The main question I had was about credit and seeing where you are, thank you very much, I’m all set.

Your next question comes from the line of Natasha Boyden – Cantor Fitzgerald Natasha Boyden – Cantor Fitzgerald: I just wanted to follow-up on Doug’s question, about vessel values, do you find them attractive at these levels or would you be potentially using your cash to perhaps focus on retiring debt.

Again, I think we think vessel values are attractive but the way we feel right now I think we’d only be doing it if there was a good long-term charter attached to is. I don’t think we’re just going to go out there and buy spot ships and increase our debt levels, I think what we would do is if we found an attractive deal with a good charter that added a lot to our cash flow, we would do that. Otherwise I think we’re just happy to just pay down debt and be conservative. Natasha Boyden – Cantor Fitzgerald: And then again, just to clarify something you said earlier with the chartering strategy that you have right now with some of the open ships coming open and the new built capes, with the rates being where they are did you say that perhaps you would look to put some away or would you focus more on perhaps short-term charters with rates where they are. I just wanted to clarify that.

No I think we would stay short-term until we saw sort of a, you’ll see these blips, we think over the next year you’ll see these blips in the market and we’d try and put something away at that point. Natasha Boyden – Cantor Fitzgerald: On some of the things you said on the industry section, I know China has obviously got the stimulus package but with some of the money going in towards some of the ship building sector with Chinese government potentially supporting some of the non profitable Greenfield yards, do you think this may potentially stop some of the deliveries being cancelled that we previously thought might be cancelled given that they might support some of these yards.

They’re not going to, the government has come out and said that they’re not going to support the Greenfield yards. What the government has said was they’re going to support some of the big yards, the big government owned yards. I think that those Greenfield yards are not going to be, not that I think they will not be supported by the government, and from our calculation we think half the new buildings in China are in those kind of yards. Natasha Boyden – Cantor Fitzgerald: And then lastly a trend we’ve kind of been seeing is that China has been sort of investing, they have recently invested in nearly $20 billion in Rio Tinto and then [inaudible] recently agreed to sell a large stake to [inaudible] what kind of an effect do you think this may have on dry bulk shipping if any, do you see a carrier as a result of increased Chinese control of mining companies or even the sort of iron ore supply chain.

I think its very smart for the Chinese to be doing that. Let’s think of it not as a country but as a business. They’ve got a lot of money, they need iron ore. We know that and to us its just a restatement, it’s a strong statement of what we’ve believed in, that they need this iron ore should why should they go pay the crazy numbers that Rio Tinto and Valley and these other charters are asking last year, why not this year where people are suffering, go buy the mine. So we think its very smart business for them and we think it only reinforces our thesis that China is going to continue to need iron ore and whether they own the mine and are shipping it to themselves or someone else owns the shipping, we think we’ll be somewhere in the middle there.

Your next question comes from the line of Chris Wetherbee – Merrill Lynch Chris Wetherbee – Merrill Lynch: One big picture, when you think about China and iron ore stockpiles, obviously they’re still relatively low when you think about steel inventory, it seems like maybe those have built a bit, are you seeing anything in the forward market as far as softening in demand for Capes for iron ore coming into China or does it still seem like its relatively robust.

I think its, look its come off the last few days in the spot market but I think overall it seems pretty robust. We’ve seen a lot of ships come out of layup. I think there’s a small number of capes now in layup which is a positive thing. Look the volatility isn’t going to go away in the short-term but hopefully we’ve turned the corner from the deep dark days in December. Chris Wetherbee – Merrill Lynch: And what you noted about the layups, what we’re seeing laid up, do those continue to be mostly the older vessels that are potentially unlikely to come back into the market unless we really see a pop here or just a mix of vessels now.

I think its more to do with the older vessels, and you actually bring up a very good point, I’ve seen some numbers where it could be as high as 6% of the global dry bulk fleet capes, all the way down to Handysize that are considered inactive whether that’s because they’re simply over age and the discount that they’d have to take to employ the ship doesn’t justify bringing it out of layup, or two, where there may be a chain of charters where you’ve had substandard charters that have gone bankrupt or stopped paying and unfortunately the first class charters just don’t want to deal with a ship like that. So and I think most of those ships eventually will go to the scrap yard. Chris Wetherbee – Merrill Lynch: Okay and then I guess looking at OpEx for a minute, I know you put out your target for an increase there, what are you seeing on crew increases, crew wage increases, it seems like a big number but I know I’m assuming you’re also weighting that towards the Capes that come on starting next quarter and obviously you’ll have a higher percentage of those, but what are you seeing as far as crew wage increases going forward.

Crew wage increases are still going up. I mean the supply and demand equation for the crew is still there. There is still more ships then crew to take them. Even given the number of cancellations and vessels that are not going to come into market from the new build market there’s still a significant number of ships going to come in and they’re still going to be a great demand for crew. And then from Genco’s point of view we are consolidating on basically two nationalities, Chinese and Indians. And we’ve reached agreements with our crew suppliers that we can cap the wages going forward so we are very, very confident that going through 2009 that we can control the crew wages as it effects Genco. Chris Wetherbee – Merrill Lynch: And I guess thinking about it from a hauling perspective, do you expect that OpEx to ramp up as you move through the year as you get more of the Capes online I’m assuming.

No what I think I’m saying is that the OpEx figures that we’ve given out we’re very confident that we can maintain that. Chris Wetherbee – Merrill Lynch: I think you touched on it about it earlier about your chartering strategy, I guess the Capes that are coming due I guess you have a few coming next quarter any update on those. I guess we’ll be hearing relatively soon as to what your plans are with those.

Yes, I mean, probably towards the end of—

The delivery dates for these three Capes, they’re not finalized yet. They’re bouncing around all over the place and we don’t have a firm delivery date from the yard but we think its going to be towards the latter half of the year for sure. Chris Wetherbee – Merrill Lynch: Okay so not necessarily in the second quarter, did I miss that in the press release.

I think you need to still assume that that first ship is going to be coming at the end of June.

Your next question comes from the line of Scott Burk – Oppenheimer Scott Burk – Oppenheimer : About the Cavalier, have you actually rechartered it at this point or is it still chartered to Samsung.

Its still technically chartered to Samsung but its in a repair yard right now undergoing repairs due to the collision that occurred when the ship was in Anchorage. Scott Burk – Oppenheimer : Would you expect to recharter that and then what would be the likelihood of recovering anything from Samsung if you ended up taking a charter that’s below the existing charter.

I think it remains to be seen, its early in the bankruptcy process for Samsung so we have to wait and see as far as how much if any we’ll be able to recover. We’re effectively an unsecured creditor so we have to go through the process. Scott Burk – Oppenheimer : I had a question about the Jinhui stake, what’s the remaining value of the stake in Jinhui at this point.

Its probably around $20 million, $21, $22 million today. Scott Burk – Oppenheimer : Does that, I assume that’s included in the equity figures that you have in the presentation, shareholders equity, so its been reduced by –

Yes. Scott Burk – Oppenheimer : And then does that have any impact, is there any potential danger on for remaining debt covenants regarding shareholders equity.

No. Because, keep in mind we have always had that investment mark-to-market in equity. The only thing we’re doing is really moving it geographically within equity. Its moving from other comprehensive income running through the income statement and changing its earnings. So the balance sheet is the balance sheet. We’ve also as part of the amendment, we carved out a noncash impairment charge so that it will not be measured in our net debt to EBITDA covenant as well. So this will not effect any covenant calculations within the credit facility. Scott Burk – Oppenheimer : Let me ask you this, vessel values are dropping, have come off quite a bit can we expect to see some vessel write-downs during the first quarter and how do you go about determining whether or not you need to take write-downs there.

We did a full vessel impairment analysis at the, in the fourth quarter year end audit. We are comfortable with what’s on the balance sheet and obviously our auditors have also signed off on that calculation, so no, I don’t see an issue with that. Scott Burk – Oppenheimer : And then maybe you can just talk broadly about, you talked about some of the positive signs coming out of China and the implication is you think this is hopefully more of a long-term change but there’s been a lot of discussion in the industry about this being kind of a head fake restocking issue that we’ve seen in terms of the surge in rates the last several months—

We didn’t say there’s a long-term trend, we said that there’s been some restocking. We think that things are better then they were in October, or November, December, but we’re not saying that this is some boom in the market. We think that its come off the bottom. There’s been some restocking but (a) we don’t think, we haven’t said anything like what you just said and (b) yet we don’t think it’s a head fake, we think things have gotten a little bit better then they were.

There are sort of two near-term things that people should be focusing on. One are the iron ore negotiations and how those come out as far as pricing. I think everyone expects 15 to 25% reduction in the price of iron ore which I think will be very favorable as far as steel margins are concerned and hence dry bulk shipping. And then the second thing is watching the hopefully the money flow from the Chinese government and getting the infrastructure spending up and going which unfortunately does take some time. Its not immediate.

Your next question comes from the line of Kevin Sterling – Stevens Incorporated Kevin Sterling – Stevens Incorporated : With the large amount of the new building cancellations that we’re seeing, do you think we’ll see a secondary market created for new building slots and would that be something you’d look at as well along with making maybe some secondary vessel acquisitions.

I don’t think that’s going to happen for some time if at all.

Also think about where those cancellations are coming from. As Peter said a lot of those are going to be from Greenfield yards. They’re never going to get up and running anyway so those slots won’t even be available.

Your next question comes from the line of Charles Rupinski – Maxim Group Charles Rupinski – Maxim Group : I had one quick question on arbitration versus going into court for the various potential recovery of any monies from Samsung or any other potential, I know that you’re very up to date on your charters and they’re all to date, but just trying to get my head around how long it can take for arbitration versus going to court, sort of a range depending on the various types of default or renegotiations, do you have any sort of a frame that we can think about that.

First of all going to court is really not an option, its arbitration, that’s what’s required under most of these time charter contracts. That’s what we’re doing with Samsung. We’re hoping for a speedy decision on that and then we’ll go from there as far as what we do with that judgment. Overall keep in mind arbitration is the last thing you want to be going through, there are plenty of other ways to deal with nonpayment of freight. Charles Rupinski – Maxim Group : On arbitration, I’ve heard this potentially being, dragging out for years, is there sort of a range of how quick a speedy resolution is versus how quickly a more prolonged one is just based on history.

Court cases, I mean come on court cases, Exxon is still fighting the Exxon Valdese from 1990 so court cases go on for years too. Charles Rupinski – Maxim Group : I’m not arguing that, I’m just trying to get an idea that’s all, I mean, arbitration, what sort of is the range that you’ve seen in the market—

We’ve been in arbitrations that have been done in less then a year, we’ve been in some that have been a couple of years.

I think in this particularly case you got to look at it a little bit differently. The arbitration that we may be talking about is revolving around a charter party but then the bankruptcy which is, and that arbitration is running [inaudible] for the charter party and then you’ve got the bankruptcy case which Samsung is involved and that’s in Korean law so you’ve got two jurisdictions here. As far as we’re concerned this arbitration that we are looking for a decision from an arbitrator now, we think that will come pretty quickly.

There are no additional questions at this time; this concludes today’s presentation.