Allen & Overy advises leading liner shipping company Hapag-Lloyd on the acquisition of a stake in JadeWeserPort

With a fleet of 253 modern container ships and a total transport capacity of 1.8 million TEU*, Hapag-Lloyd is one of the world's leading liner shipping companies. The listed company has around 14,100 employees in 137 countries. Hapag-Lloyd has a container capacity of approximately 3.1 million TEU. A total of 126 liner services worldwide ensure connections between more than 600 ports on all continents. Hapag-Lloyd is one of the leading operators in the transatlantic, Middle East, Latin America and Intra-America trades.

JWP was put into operation in 2012 and is the easternmost deep-water port in Northern Europe (northern range ports). CTW is Germany's only deep-water container terminal. The world's biggest ocean carriers have unrestricted access to the port at all times independently of tidal conditions. With a navigation channel 18 m deep and the world's biggest container gantries, CTW offers ideal prerequisites for loading and unloading large container vessels of any size. As a common-user terminal, all shipping lines worldwide will be able to use the terminal. As transshipment hub, CTW is in particular available for feeder services to Scandinavia, the Baltic and Russia. Thanks to RTW, the CTW's connection to the hinterland is ensured via harbour railway.

A.P. Moller – Maersk operates the largest liner shipping company worldwide and offers shipping services in 130 countries as integrated container logistics company with around 80,000 employees.

Eurogate is part of listed logistics group EUROKAI GmbH & Co. KGaA.

The transaction was completed on 29 April 2022 following the EU Commission's approval of the transaction on the same day.

Allen & Overy's team was led by partners Dr Helge Schäfer and Dr Jonas Wittgens (both Corporate/M&A) and further comprised partners Dr Börries Ahrens (Antitrust, all Hamburg) and Dr Heike Weber (Tax, Frankfurt), who were supported by associates Dr Jan-Benedikt Fischer, Daniel Wendler and Louisa Graubner (all Corporate/M&A, Hamburg) as well as senior associates Dr Ioannis Thanos (Antitrust, Hamburg) and Dr Thomas Dieker (Tax, Frankfurt).

The team further comprised partners Dr Christian Hilmes (Real Estate, Hamburg), Dr Udo H. Olgemöller (Public Law) and Dr Tim Müller (Compliance, both Frankfurt) as well as counsel Dr Daniel Bolm (Corporate/M&A, Hamburg), senior associates Anna Kräling (IP), Catharina Glugla (Data Protection, both Düsseldorf) and Dr Anna Jung (Public Law) as well as associates Lisa Wantzen (Employment & Benefits), Dr Jasmin Hense (Compliance) and Hauke Jung (Real Estate, all Frankfurt).

Hapag-Lloyd was advised inhouse by Thomas Mansfeld (General Counsel) and Dr Anne-Kathrin Drettmann (Deputy Head of Corporate Finance and Legal).

* Twenty-foot equivalent unit is an internationally standardised unit to measure ISO containers of various sizes and for describing the capacity of container ships and terminals in the context of container transport.