Greek regulators have allowed Attica Group to buy the 48.5% stake it didn’t already own in local rival Hellenic Seaways (HSW).
The decision, announced late on Thursday, is the epilogue to a longstanding feud over HSW that pitched interests aligned with the company’s previous management against Italy’s Grimaldi Group, which had amassed the 48.5% stake in a failed bid to wrest control of HSW.
The bitter struggle was resolved last year, when Attica Group emerged as a white knight to buy 50.3% of HSW from Greece’s Piraeus Bank and other minority shareholders. Attica then agreed to buy Grimaldi's stake too.
The Hellenic Competition Authority has now approved the latter deal, which creates the largest Greek ferry operator by far, with a combined fleet of about 30 conventional passengerships, fast ferries and catamarans.
However, it imposed some remedial measures to ensure competition is maintained on several routes in the Aegean.
The watchdog has accepted Attica’s offer to withdraw, or reduce, its calls on some routes between Attica and the Greek islands. Attica has also pledged to maintain fare prices steady on some key Aegean routes for between thee and five years and also to increase routes to remote islands that are usually unprofitable.
Attica has already agreed to sell two of its ships to Grimaldi as part of the deal: the 30,900-gt Superfast XII (built 2002), which it owns; and the 4,927-gt Highspeed 7 (ex-Highspeed 5, built 2005), which is owned by HSW.
As TradeWinds reported, the two vessels’ combined purchase price of €99.5m ($120m) exceeds the €78.5m that Attica is spending on Grimaldi’s HSW stake.
When Attica announced its acquisition of a 50.3% stake in HSW, it said it would spend €30.6m in cash and 24.15 million new Attica shares, to be issued in a future capital increase, to gain control of the company.
Attica Group is 89.5%-owned by Greece’s Marfin Investment Group (MIG).
