GERMANY's two top container shipping lines, Hapag-Lloyd and Hamburg Sud, have confirmed they have entered into merger talks that would - if successful - create the world's fourth biggest container carrier.
"The executive boards of Hapag-Lloyd AG and of Hamburg Sudamerikanische Dampfschifffahrts-Gesellschaft KG (Hamburg Sud), in agreement with their shareholders, are investigating if, and under what conditions, a merger of both companies would be of interest," said the single sentence joint press statement.
Classification societies, Germany's Germanischer Lloyd and Norway's Det Norske Veritas, had only been discussing a possible merger a few days ago. Hapag-Lloyd shareholder Klaus-Michael Kuhne recently said the companies were a good fit. The two Hamburg-based shipping companies have talked merger before but could not agree on ultimate control.
Together, says Lloyd's List Intelligence, the two lines' combined fleet would total nearly 1.3 million TEU, placing it behind Copenhagen's Maersk, Geneva's MSC, Marseille's CMA CGM, and moving ahead of Taipei's Evergreen Marine that would then fall into fifth place. As it stands, Hapag-Lloyd is now in seventh place with 760,000 TEU and Hamburg Sud is in 12th place with 516,000 TEU.
Alphaliner's list of the Top 100 container shipping companies places Hapag-Lloyd as the sixth largest container shipping company with 162 owned and chartered ships with an aggregate 634,086 TEU, or 3.8 per cent of the world's fleet. Hamburg Sud is 12th with 102 ships and 416,859 TEU, or 2.5 per cent of the world's fleet.
As Hapag-Lloyd focuses on east-west trades and Hamburg Sud on north-south routes, they appear to be likely merger partners, but such attempts have failed before. The last one collapsed in 1997 because the two sides could not agree who would run the operation post merger.
Hamburg Sud is owned by the Oetker family, which is reportedly beset with internal tensions, and that may have prompted the talks. Hapag-Lloyd is mostly owned by the City of Hamburg, with local interests creating a fund, the Albert Ballin fund, that staved off foreign interests among them, Singapore's Neptune Orient Lines that made a bid in 2008.
The Albert Ballin consortium owns 77.96 per cent of Hapag Lloyd. That consortium consists of the City of Hamburg, Kuhne Maritime, Signal Iduna, HSH Nordbank, MM Warburg Bank and HanseMerkur. Another 22.04 per cent is owned by German travel giant TUI.
Although shareholder Tui wants out, it will need more than a Hamburg Sud deal to achieve that. But the merger is expected to open the road to an IPO, which is understood to be one of the objectives of the talks, particularly that of Hapag-Lloyd chairman Michael Behrendt.
SHIPPING NEWS
19 December 2012 - 16:53
Merger talks between Germany's Hapag-Lloyd and Hamburg Sud underway
GERMANY's two top container shipping lines, Hapag-Lloyd and Hamburg Sud, have confirmed they have entered into merger talks...
SHIPPING NEWS
19 December 2012 - 16:53
Merger talks between Germany's Hapag-Lloyd and Hamburg Sud underway
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