The world’s largest container shipping company MSC has cleared the way for its entry into the Hamburg port operator HHLA.
According to a mandatory publication on the MSC website on Friday, the Ukrainian competition authorities have now also given the green light. This means that all of the closing conditions described in the offer documents have been met, it added. The Ukrainian competition authorities were the last to give their approval. HHLA operates a terminal in the Black Sea port of Odessa. However, the deal is controversial at the company’s headquarters in Hamburg, where HHLA’s management was apparently surprised by the Senate’s plans in September 2023. Around a year later, the city parliament approved the deal after heated debates, and the EU Commission gave its OK at the beginning of October.
In the deal, the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg, as a major shareholder, will transfer shares in the listed HHLA subgroup Port Logistics to the Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC), meaning that the industry leader in international container shipping will hold almost half of the traditional Hamburg-based group in future. MSC is owned by the family of Italian-born CEO Gianluigi Aponte and is considered to be extremely secretive.
With the Swiss-based company, a rival of the Hamburg shipping company Hapag-Lloyd is acquiring a stake in HHLA – the most important port operator in Germany’s largest seaport. The deal had triggered some fierce criticism in the Hanseatic city. This was not only for economic reasons, but also because of the city’s identity, which is strongly linked to the port.
IN THE END, TIME WAS RUNNING OUT
Competition authorities from a number of other countries had already approved the deal before the Ukrainian antitrust authorities. In the end, the pending decision by the antitrust watchdogs in Ukraine meant that time was running out: according to the offer documents, all official approvals had to be received by Wednesday of next week, otherwise the deal would have fallen through after all.
Critics fear that MSC will have too much influence and that HHLA’s future is uncertain. In recent months, the public has repeatedly voiced harsh criticism. Terms such as “sold off silverware” and “historic mistake” have been used. The red-green Senate, on the other hand, hopes that the involvement of the shipping giant will have positive effects for the Port of Hamburg in what have been difficult times for some time.
In the countdown to MSC’s entry, the business of Hamburg’s largest port operator has recently improved, with turnover growing by almost 17 percent in the third quarter and operating profit by almost 40 percent. This was also due to a significant increase in transport volumes, including at the rail subsidiary Metrans, which critics of MSC’s entry regard as a pearl of HHLA that was sold short. HHLA operates three terminals in Hamburg as well as one each in Estonia’s capital Tallinn, Trieste in Italy and Odessa.
Source: Reuters