German shipping veteran Bernd Kortum has died aged 78.
Kortum, a trailblazer of Germany’s KG (limited partnership) financing system, passed away last week after reportedly suffering from a long illness.
As one of the early architects of Germany’s tax-efficient KG schemes, Kortum will be remembered as part of a generation that helped build the country into what was once the world’s largest container shipowning nation.
Arriving in Hamburg in 1975, he helped grow Norddeutsche Vermogen Group into a company which at its height controlled a fleet of over 100 vessels.
The financial crisis brought a halt to that expansion and left Kortum’s shipping interests struggling with low earnings for most of the following decade.
Some of Kortum’s toughest times came in late 2016 after the then HSH Nordbank issued debt relief to his shipping company Norddeutsche Reederei H Schuldt (NRS) in excess of half-a-billion dollars. Kortum was for many years the biggest client of HSH Nordbank.
That culminated in the sale of NRS in October 2018 to Advent, the private equity backers of ship manager V. Group.
By then, Kortum had slimmed his fleet down to around 46 containerships.
No regrets
Kortum remained a staunch defender of the decisions he had taken to the end.
In his last interview with TradeWinds in January 2019, Kortum argued that the KG system had been harshly judged.
He maintained that the problems of the container market after the financial crisis were due to overordering by liner shipping companies.
“Nobody out of [the] KG scene ordered vessels after 2008/9. The liner companies ordered vessels like hell. We didn’t do that,” he said.
Kortum had talks to sell his company to several interested parties, but he ultimately opted to sell to the larger ship-management group which he admired the most.
“If you can’t beat them, join them. This is what I did,” he said.
Kortum felt that the decisions he took served employees in his company well.
Most importantly, they kept the shipping interests in Hamburg, from where his real estate and holding interests were managed.
“I don’t’ regret anything,” he said.
