“We want to reach an agreement by the end of January,” an unnamed Hapag-Lloyd manager told Die Welt, which broke the news of merger talks in December.
Hapag-Lloyd and CSAV: Trade Lane MixThe imminent agreement would see CSAV acquire a 30 percent stake in the enlarged Hapag-Lloyd, but it is unclear whether the Chilean carrier’s 54 ships are part of the transaction or whether they will be chartered to Germany’s largest container shipping line.
Die Welt quoted Klaus-Michael Kuehne, Hapag-Lloyd’s second largest shareholder with a 28.2 percent stake, saying: “I see good chances of clinching a deal [with CSAV].”
The Luksic family, which holds a controlling 46 percent stake in CSAV, is “happy” to have a minority holding in the merged group, the paper quoted a person familiar with the family as saying
The two companies considered a cross-ownership deal several years ago.
The City of Hamburg, which owns 36.9 percent of Hapag-Lloyd, and Kuehne, who also controls Swiss-based global logistics company Kuehne+Nagel, have been pushing for mergers with rival carriers to narrow the gap with the world’s top three lines – Maersk, Mediterranean Shipping Co. and CMA CGM.
Additionally, the German tourism group TUI, Hapag-Lloyd’s former owner, which retains a 22 percent stake, wants to exit container shipping, preferably via an initial public offering.
Hapag-Lloyd Chairman Juergen Weber recently called on Germany’s second largest carrier Hamburg Süd to join the merger talks with CSAV. The carriers called off merger negotiations in March 2013 after failing to agree on the ownership split in an enlarged company.
A combined Hapag-Lloyd-CSAV would overtake Taiwan’s Evergreen Line as the world’s fourth largest carrier, with a fleet capacity of just over 998,000 TEUs and a 5.6 percent market share.
