KDB eyes sale of stake in box line HMM to steel giant POSCO

Interesting news from South Korea this morning: BusinessKorea reports that the state-owned Korea Development Bank, which became the largest shareholder in container shipping line HMM after its restructure in 2017, intends to sell its 12.6% stake to South Korean steel manufacturing giant POSCO. Which would possibly make for a fascinating example of vertical integration, given POSCO’s enormous logistics spend. “If POSCO directly jumps into the shipping industry, it is expected to save POSCO trillions of won annually, as the company will be able to integrate its affiliates’ logistics work. POSCO Group has strong financial power to do that. As of the end of the third quarter of 2020, POSCO’s cash and cashable assets amounted to Won6,769 billion won. This means POSCO can afford to pay between 1 trillion and 1.5 trillion won to buy HMM.”