HAPAG LLOYD merger with HAMBURG SUDZ is about to happen... sure jia lat .rate will go down liao

Hapag-Lloyd co-owner Klaus-Michael Kuehne wants the container shipping group's prospective merger partner Hamburg-Sued to have equal say in the mooted tie-up, he told a German paper.

" My assumption is that there will be parity in the beginning," Kuehne, who also controls Swiss logistics group Kuehne & Nagel, told daily Die Welt in an interview published on Friday.
Neither the Albert-Ballin consortium of Hapag-Lloyd investors, led by Kuehne, nor the Oetker family behind Hamburg-Sued should be able to dominate the combined group, he added.
Hapag-Lloyd and Hamburg-Sued, Germany's largest container shipping companies, said in December they were exploring a merger to create a global player better able to survive the sector's four-year slump.

Kuehne said in the interview the Oetker family would have to commit to plans to take the new company public in the medium term as a precondition for a merger agreement.
" (An initial public offering) won't happen tomorrow or the day after but it also won't take five years. I think a time horizon of two to three years is realistic."
" Later, as part of an IPO, an ideal scenario would be for Oetker to maybe hold 40 percent, for me to hold a blocking minority of 25 percent or a little less in the long-term, and for the rest to be floated," Kuehne added.

If no agreement with Oetker can be reached Kuehne would push for Hapag-Lloyd to go public on its own.
" But I do not wish for this to happen," he added.

Source: Reuters