Singapore's Neptune Orient Lines CEO Thomas Held has expressed a renewed interest in merging his APL container line with Germany's Hapag-Lloyd, reports Reuters and Bloomberg in the International Herald Tribune.
"We want to take an active role in consolidation," said Dr Held. "We have to see what's the next step in Germany."
Dr Held made the statement after Hapag-Lloyd's parent, the German tourism and shipping company TUI, which is now showing signs of giving in to angry investors and has admitted that it is considering selling its troubled container line.
TUI chief executive Michael Frenzel has come under severe personal attack from angry shareholders led by the "Rambo of the capital markets" Guy Wyser-Pratte, an ex-US Marine, who wants the boss's head: "Do we renew this clown's contract," he told American Shipper. "This guy has done nothing in the last 13 years but destroy the value of the company. . . Everything he's bought he overpaid for, everything he sold had tripled in value and his salary has quadrupled."
TUI refused comment on NOL's latest expression of interest. But analysts agree a merger makes sense, being a good fit with Neptune Orient's APL focus on transpacific routes while Hapag-Lloyd mostly sails transatlantic and along Asia-Europe tradelanes. Demand on routes between Asia and Europe last year helped Neptune Orient more than triple net income in the third quarter.
Nationalist concerns have been raised because Germany is the world's leading exporter, and a deal that would put its biggest shipping company into foreign hands. Investment bank MM Warburg has marshalled German investors opposed to the sale of Hapag-Lloyd to a foreign company.
NOL is controlled by Temasek, Singapore's state-owned investment arm.
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