Orient Overseas International Ltd.’s announcement that it will spend almost $1 billion on the purchase of six 20,000-TEU ships has put an end to speculation that the Hong Kong-listed line was interested in acquiring troubled APL from Neptune Orient Lines.
So with OOIL’s liner division OOCL out of the running, are there any other carriers reaching for their checkbooks with APL in mind? Hapag-Lloyd was mentioned in the same speculative piece carried in the Singapore media last month, but as it digests the CSAV acquisition, the German line is hardly in a position to throw money around, especially after reporting a 2014 loss of $652 million on the merger costs.
