News / Hamburg's city parliament approves MSC purchase of stake in HHLA

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Hamburg City parliament yesterday voted to approve MSC’s acquisition of a 49.9% stake in the port’s terminal operator HHLA.

Despite mounting opposition to the deal over the summer, Hamburg’s ruling government – a coalition between the SPD and the Green party, known locally as the ‘red-green coalition’ – saw the proposal pass with 105 votes for and 33 against.

All the opposition parties – FPD, CDU, the Left and AfD – voted against it.

The last remaining obstacle to the deal is European Commission competition approval.

And there still remains substantial opposition to MSC’s entrance to Hamburg from local dockworker unions, according to German logistics and trade publication DVZ, which quoted local ver.di leader Sandra Goldschmidt as saying: “This is a black day for Hamburg”, and adding that the port and the city’s politicians should have explored other ways to arrest Hamburg’s decline.

“Instead, [it] is aiding and abetting the monopoly formation of the world’s largest shipping company, MSC, which is conspicuous by its disregard for employee and environmental rights,” Ms Goldschmidt said.

However, among the commitments HHLA managed to secure from both MSC and City of Hamburg include a new injection of €450m equity capital into the company, further minimum investment of €775m in its container terminals and intermodal network between 2025 and 2028, the continuation of HHLA as a common-user operator and its “neutrality and independence – in particular of intermodal subsidiary Metrans and the equal treatment of all customers” and an assurance that there will be no redundancies among its workforce for at least five years.

Other elements of the deal include an obligation from MSC to transfer its German HQ to Hamburg and to put a minimum 1m teu a year over its docks by 2031.

In its half-year results announced in mid-August, HHLA said port throughput increased 2.2% year on year, to 2.94m teu, while container transport on its intermodal services was up 1.8%, to 833,000 teu.

Group revenue during the period was up 4.6%, to €760m, while Ebit grew 16.8%, to €58.9m, representing an Ebit margin of 7.7%.