A consortium of Hamburg businessmen and the city government of Hamburg have outbid Singapore's Neptune Orient Line (NOL) for the container business of Hapag-Lloyd.

Klaus-Michael Kühne, head of Kuehne + Nagel, which recently broke ground on a logistics site near Hamburg, and Christian Olearius of MM Warburg are top figures in the group acquiring Hapag-Lloyd. Current Hapag-Lloyd parent TUI will buy back one third of the company. Though TUI is selling the container line to focus on its tourism businesses, its partial stake in Hapag-Lloyd has been described as a means to bring the deal down to a price that both valued the operation fairly and brought it within reach of the buyers.

View the rest of this article or leave a comment.