Published October 11, 2008

NOL pulls out of race for Hapag-Lloyd

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(Frankfurt)

SINGAPORE'S Neptune Orient Lines (NOL) dropped out of the race to acquire German TUI AG's container shipping unit Hapag-Lloyd, NOL said in a statement yesterday.

'NOL will now put all its energy into managing through the current container shipping down cycle and providing our customers with the service they have come to expect of our organisation,' NOL chief executive officer Ron Widdows said.

This means that a group of Hamburg-based investors led by Klaus-Michael Kuehne, head of Swiss logistics company Kuehne & Nagel, and M M Warburg partner Christian Olearius is the only remaining bidder for Hapag-Lloyd, the world's fifth largest container shipping group.

Major TUI shareholder John Fredriksen said earlier yesterday that the German tourism and shipping group's supervisory board would discuss a possible sale of Hapag-Lloyd at a meeting at the weekend.

German media reports said that NOL made a bid worth about 3.5 billion euros (S$7 billion) and that the Hamburg group had offered more than four billion euros.



Mr Fredriksen, who holds about 15 per cent in TUI, was a major force that led TUI CEO Michael Frenzel to drop his twin-pillar strategy and decide to separate its tourism business, TUI Travel from its Hapag-Lloyd container shipping unit. -- Reuters