Skaramangas surprise
The sudden change of identity of the bidder for the Hellenic Shipyards at Skaramangas must have taken the government by surprise yesterday, as the US private equity house One Equity Partners yesterday bought the German shipyard HDW, which had agreed to buy the Greek shipyard. Babcock Borsig AG, an indebted engineering group which had been looking for a partner to develop the profitable HDW yard, said in a statement it had sold a 25-percent stake in Howaldtswerke-Deutsche Werft AG (HDW) to One Equity, a subsidiary of the Chicago-based Bank One Corporation. Prices were not disclosed but Reuters reported that analysts valued HDW at about 800 million euros because of its strong orders and profits. Babcock said One Equity was committed to maintaining HDW as a universal shipyard, would not seek to influence operations and would forego a dividend for the first five years. The deal still requires the approval of competition authorities. The change of HDW’s ownership could lead to further complications in the Greek government’s effort to sell the Skaramangas shipyard, a deal that was agreed upon between HDW and the government last October but which still had not been finalized. Reports said that HDW’s new owners had told Germany’s Deutsche Welle radio that they would not change their strategy with regard to the Hellenic Shipyards. The German company, the world’s leading maker of non-nuclear submarines, had been demanding that it not be held liable for delays in delivery of orders already placed by the Greek State and that the shipyard receive more Defense Ministry orders beyond the 2.93-billion-euros already on the books. HDW also wanted to retain fewer than 1,400 of the Hellenic Shipyards 2,000 employees. National Economy and Finance Minister Nikos Christodoulakis had been saying until recently that the shipyard sale would be finalized in the next few weeks. But rumors were rife yesterday that HDW would be sold and the government was unable to contact the officials at the German company with which it had been negotiating over the last few months, sources said. Greece’s Development Ministry called an emergency meeting for today in order to decide what it would do. It was then contacted by Babcock which told them that it had sold the German company to the US investors.
