EC approves Hapag-Lloyd sale

The European Commission said Friday it has approved the proposed acquisition of Hapag-Lloyd from the tourism company TUI AG by an investor group based in Hamburg that includes Kühne Holding AG, and HGV, a holding company for business activities of the City of Hamburg.

After examining the operation, the commission concluded that the transaction would not significantly impede effective competition in the European Economic Area (EEA) or any substantial part of it, the EC said in a statement.

TUI has said it will buy back a one-third entrepreneurial stake in Hapag-Lloyd once the deal is completed. Reportedly, in addition to Kühne Holding AG and HGV, the investment bank MM Warburg and insurers Signal-Iduna and HanseMerkur are also part of the so-called Albert Ballin investor group, named for a famous turn-of-the-century Hamburg ship owner, who wants to buy Hapag-Lloyd from TUI.

The EC described Kühne as the parent company of a group of companies that are active in the logistics business with its main activities in sea freight forwarding, air freight forwarding and contract logistics, though Küehne + Nagle has the investment is being done by its chairman Klaus-Michael Küehne, not directly by the big forwarder and logistics company.

The EC said its examination of the proposed transaction showed that the horizontal overlaps of the activities of the parties are very limited. Hapag-Lloyd is not active in the same markets as Kühne or HGV, apart from a container joint venture terminal in the port of Hamburg, where Hapag-Lloyd is the co-controlling minority shareholder with HGV as the majority shareholder. Both Kühne and HGV provide inland transportation services, but in view of their low market shares the proposed transaction is unlikely to result in any competition concerns in this market.

The proposed transaction would give rise to vertical links since Kühne is active in sea freight forwarding and sea freight forwarders are among the main customers of container liner shipping services. HGV and Kühne are also active in inland transportation, which is vertically related to container liner shipping services. However, in view of the parties' limited market power in the markets concerned the commission concluded that the proposed transaction would not result in any appreciable risk of restricting access to customers or supplies.

Source: American Shipper