Neptune Orient has sold its main office building and some vessels amid four consecutive years of losses.
Neptune Orient Lines Ltd. said it’s in separate talks with France’s CMA CGM SA and Denmark’s A.P. Moeller-Maersk A/S on a potential sale of the Singapore container shipping company.
CMA CGM has made a preliminary offer for Neptune Orient, which has a market value of S$2.7 billion ($1.9 billion), people with the knowledge said earlier, asking not to be identified as the information is private. Marseille-based CMA CGM is now conducting due diligence, though it hasn’t been granted exclusivity, according to one of the people. Maersk is also in talks about an acquisition of Neptune Orient, though the discussions are less advanced, the people said.
A deal is unlikely to be struck soon, as the slumping shipping sector damps the appetite for aggressive bidding, two of the people said.