Hamburg government to sell its Hapag-Lloyd shares?

News 30 Aug 2021 by WCN Editorial

According to local reports, Hamburg city state, the shipping company’s third biggest shareholder, is considering selling its 13.9% stake

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At first sight this looks like an opportunistic move since Hapag-Lloyd is trading very profitably and its EBIT for 2021 could be between €6.2B and €7.9B according to some estimates. A sale of the entire share packet could thus realize up to €3.55B at a time when the city and port of Hamburg are in a difficult position. The city’s budget has been under considerable strain because of the pandemic. The Opposition parties favour a sale.

The difficulty of a sale scenario is that the city would no longer have any influence on Hapag-Lloyd’s strategic decisions, including where it keeps its global headquarters and the future of its 25.1% stake in Container Terminal Altenwerder. It could also compromise the city’s ability to influence what a merger between HHLA and Eurogate would look like, especially now that Klaus-Michael Kühne has come out in favour of it.

For his part, despite the likely “windfall” that would result from the sale, Andreas Dressel, Finance Senator, wants the city to hold on to its 24.35M shares. “We would continue to earn important dividends; our shareholding should be viewed independently of short term economical speculation.”

Hapag-Lloyd’s CEO Rolf Habben Jansen has stated that nothing would change before 2024 at the earliest. He said that the shareholders’ agreement between the three main shareholders – Klaus-Michael Kühne (30%), CSAV (30%) and the city of Hamburg (13.9%) – specifically states that they have invested with a long-term perspective.