Hapag-Lloyd Not Seeking State Aid

Hapag-Lloyd, responding to reports that mounting losses are crippling the carrier's finances, denied today it is in talks with the German government for state financial assistance.

Hapag-Lloyd spokesman Klaus Heims rejected media reports that the shipping line is in talks with the state financing agency KfW to receive a credit worth $417 million, according to Dow Jones Newswires.

TUI AG, which is a partial owner of Hapag-Lloyd, declined comment on the matter. But another partial owner, Klaus-Michael Kuehne, who controls around 15 percent of the company, mentioned the possibility of state assistance in an interview published Friday in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

“Such a move could not be ruled out," and financial support from the German state would "certainly make sense", he said. "The German state should make sure that the German shipping fleet does not cease to exist," Kuehne said.

The group's operating loss widened in the second quarter from the $313.2 million posted in the first quarter, the paper said, without saying where it obtained the information. Hapag-Lloyd has hired a management consultancy to help it examine different options to secure its future, it said on Wednesday.

Sources close to Hapag-Lloyd financing talks have told Reuters that investor Albert Ballin is being asked to inject more capital into the company.

The other members of the Albert Ballin consortium, which owns the majority of Hapag-Lloyd, are the city state of Hamburg, ship financier HSH Nordbank, MM Warburg bank and the insurers Signal Iduna and Hanse Merkur.

Former sole owner TUI still holds 43.3 percent.

Contact Peter T. Leach at pleach@joc.com.