Shipping brokers in Tokyo say that Morgan Stanley has joined a growing international scramble to secure an oil supertanker and use it to store millions of barrels of crude in what commodity dealers believe may be the “trade of the year”.

The rush to snap up supertankers and profit from the huge “contango” spreads between the falling crude spot price and rising futures price comes amid dire warnings by analysts over the future of the wider shipping industry.

Massive overcapacity and slumping global trade are expected to trigger a second collapse in cargo rates, which already plunged nearly 94 per cent last year.

Exports from China, Taiwan, South Korea and Japan are falling fast and are expected to drop farther at a pace not seen since the early 1980s.