593
Views

Merger Deal Involved Over Thirty Miles of Paperwork

paperwork

Published Aug 2, 2016 8:46 PM by The Maritime Executive

Hapag-Lloyd reviewed 50 kilometers (31 miles) of paperwork before concluding the contract to merge with UASC.

The negotiations stretched out over several months, and a due diligence was carried out before the contract was signed. During a two-month-long due diligence process, Hapag-Lloyd examined 11,000 UASC documents and contracts making up more than 133,000 pages. For its part, UASC had to review more than 44,000 pages of Hapag-Lloyd documents. If placed in a single line, all of these documents would stretch out for over 50 kilometers. 

However, these days, instead of being viewed in paper form, documents are scanned and made available in secure electronic data rooms.

By signing the merger agreement with UASC, Hapag-Lloyd has taken a huge step forward in terms of size and will number among the five largest liner shipping companies in the world after the integration. By having capacities greater than 1.5 million TEU, this group of five sets itself apart from the remaining companies in the industry, all of whose capacities lie significantly below the million mark, including that of Taiwan-based Evergreen (around 960,000 TEU).

With the recent merger – which still needs to be approved by competition authorities around the globe – and the 2014 merger with the Chilean container shipping company CSAV, Hapag-Lloyd has more than doubled in size in just three years. By taking over the container business of CSAV, Hapag-Lloyd climbed into the ranks of the market leaders in Latin America and is now one of the top two providers in the trades between Asia and South America as well as between North and South America. This was already the case in the North Atlantic.

If UASC is integrated into Hapag-Lloyd, it will also become one of the big players in the Middle Eastern market. UASC is bringing new ultra large container vessels into the union. At present, the average size of the roughly 180 vessels in Hapag-Lloyd’s fleet is 5,500 TEU, which already exceeds the average of the 20 largest liner shipping companies.