HCI Hammonia AG plans boxship IPO

German KG house HCI Capital and ship manager Hammonia are going to float their joint container ship trust HCI Hammonia AG on the Hamburg stock exchange on 27 November. The partners said they have raised €150M ($220M) in equity from institutional investors in recent months for a portfolio of eight container vessels of 2,500 to 3,100 TEU. “We can comfortably invest in further ships following this successful placing,” declared Dr. Karsten Liebing, member of the executive board at HCI Hammonia. The group’s shareholder base is largely made up of insurance companies, pension funds and banks from Germany and Austria. The structure of a listed joint stock company makes it possible for institutional investors to benefit from the tonnage tax, up to now the domain of private KG investors. Tailored as a holding for single purpose ship companies under the German tonnage tax, such a vehicle offers greater tradability for corporate investors than traditional, less flexible KG funds. HCI Hammonia is the second German ‘ship PLC’ after Marenave which was launched as a blind pool offering to the same clientele about a year ago.