TUI will propose to the Albert Ballin consortium to acquire ulterior a 33.3% of Hapag-Lloyd



Tourist group German TUI has announced the intention to yield a part consisting of remaining own quota in the shipowning society Hapag-Lloyd di Amburgo. From months voices of possible purchasers circulate, between which the group Neptune Orient Lines (NOL) of Singapore that in 2008 had tried without success the operation. Evidently the negotiations with third party have not gone successfully and group TUI, than currently stops 38.4% about of Hapag-Lloyd, has decided, as expected from the agreements with the Albert Ballin consortium, to propose this last purchase of ulterior a 33.3% of the capital of the company. The consortium, that it is constituted by the city administration of Amburgo and Holding Kühne, Signal Iduna, HSH Nordbank, M.M. Warburg Bank and HanseMerkur, currently possesses 61.6% of the shipowning company.

If an agreement on the value of the quota 33.3% will not be reached by the parts, such figure will be determined by auditor making functions of arbitrator. The agreement previews that if the contract for the cession of the quota to Albert Ballin will not come undersigned within the end of the next september, TUI will have the faculty to yield a quota majority in Hapag-Lloyd to investor third party and the Albert Ballin consortium will be obliged to yield to the same investor and the same price the number of actions necessary in order to give to the purchaser the control of Hapag-Lloyd. In such case TUI its entire participation in the German shipowning company will be able therefore to yield.

TUI has emphasized that the cession of 33.3% of the capital, decided today from the board of directors and approved of from the surveillance council, constitutes a remarkable step ahead towards the escape of the group from the field of the containerized marine transport and has confirmed that constitutes the exercise of the exit right, the right established contractually - based on which TUI can yield its participation - that can be practised within next 2 January.

"Our escape from the field of the marine transport of the container - the managing director of TUI, Michael Frenzel has remembered - is established three years ago with all the partner of the consortium of Amburgo. In the course of the current year we have already reduced ours invested capital of a billion of euro". The slid spring, in fact, TUI had already diminished from 49.8% to 38.4% own participation in Hapag-Lloyd yielding 11.33% of the capital to the Albert Ballin consortium. "The exercise of ours to stretch right - it has observed Frenzel - constitutes our next step now".