WFW and Hogan Lovells Advise on Hapag-Lloyd Green Ship Finance

Watson Farley & Williams (WFW) and Hogan Lovells jointly advised on three separate green ship financing transactions with an aggregate value of over $1.5 billion.

All three transactions, one of which was secured by Chinese ECA Sinosure, were carried out in accordance with the Green Loan Principles of the Loan Market Association. WFW advised arrangers, financing banks and green loan arranger, with Hogan Lovells acting for Hapag-Lloyd.

In October 2024, Hapag-Lloyd signed two orders for a total of 24 container ships with two Chinese shipyards. Twelve ships with a capacity of 16,800 TEU will be built by the Yangzijiang Shipbuilding Group, which will be used for capacity expansions to existing services. A further 12 vessels with a capacity of 9,200 TEU have been ordered from New Times Shipbuilding Company and will replace older units in Hapag-Lloyd’s fleet that are approaching the end of their service life this decade.

The three green ship financings comprise:

• a $1.1 billion green term loan, backed by Sinosure, to finance the construction of six 16,800 TEU and two 9,200 TEU newbuilding container vessels. HSBC Continental Europe acted as ECA coordinator, green loan arranger and arranger for a syndicate of banks consisting of BNP Paribas, BNP Paribas Fortis, Citibank, Crédit Agricole CIB, DZ Bank, ING Bank and SMBC;

• a $280.8 million bilateral green term loan to finance the construction of three9,200 TEU newbuild vessels with KfW IPEX-Bank as the financing bank; and

• a $201 million bilateral green term loan to finance the construction of two 9,200 TEU newbuild vessels with Bank of America Europe Designated Activity Company as the financing bank.

The cross-border WFW Assets & Structured Finance team that advised the arrangers and financing banks was led by London Assets Partner Maren Brandes.

The Hogan Lovells Frankfurt Corporate & Finance team advising Hapag-Lloyd was led by Frankfurt Partner Bianca Engelmann.