Watson Farley & Williams (“WFW”) advised the Bremen-based Zeaborn Group (“ZEABORN“) on the formation of a joint venture with the MPC Capital Group (“MPC“). Under this joint venture, ZEABORN and MPC will combine their global activities for the chartering and commercial management of 160 container and bulk carriers.
The joint venture will operate under the name “Harper Petersen” which ZEABORN already uses for its activities in this area. ZEABORN contributes its relevant companies in Hamburg, Hong Kong and Singapore into the joint venture. MPC adds its active companies using the brand “Contchart” in Hamburg, the Netherlands and Singapore to the merged activities. Those will be renamed to also run under the brand “Harper Petersen”.
ZEABORN is a global, integrated shipping company, providing services along the entire value-added chain and caters for financing and capital market requirements. Under the brand ZEABORN Ship Management, the company offers the full range of ship management activities such as technical, commercial, crewing and operations. ZEABORN is majority owned by Bremen based entrepreneur Kurt Zech who also heads the Zech-Group GmbH.
MPC Capital AG is an international asset and investment manager for real asset investments. Together with its subsidiaries, the company develops and manages real asset investments and investment products for international institutional investors, family offices and professional investors. They focus on the Shipping, Real Estate and Infrastructure asset categories.
The closing of the transaction is subject to the merger control clearance.
The Hamburg team of WFW was led by Maritime Partner Dr Christian Finnern. He was supported by Partners Dr Björn-Axel Dißars (Corporate), Jörg Walzer (Tax) and Dr Andreas Wiegreffe (Employment). Of Counsel Torge Rademacher, Managing Associate Dr. Malte von Seht (Corporate) as well as Associates Julia König, Dr Frank Wacht (both Maritime) and Richard Henshaw (Employment) also advised on the transaction.
Christian commented: “We are pleased to have once again been able to advise ZEABORN on a strategically important transaction. We have proven once more that our Maritime Group meets the needs of our clients in the maritime industry comprehensively and accurately. Our highly experienced, multidisciplinary team has again demonstrated its ability to support a globally active market participant such as ZEABORN as well as other key players in the maritime industry”.
