Amid massive Asian shipbuilding consolidation, South Korea’s Hyundai Heavy Industries (HHI) has started the lengthy process of getting anti-trust regulators from across the world to approve its takeover of compatriot Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering (DSME). HHI has submitted an application to merge with DSME to South Korea’s Fair Trade Commission (FTC) as well as with similar bodies across the world including Japan, the European Union and China.
Combined HHI and DSME will control 21% of the global shipbuilding orderbook. The merger has met enormous opposition from workers at the two yards, who have already seen around 30,000 workers laid off in recent years.
Earlier concern that the Chinese might make approval tricky for the merger has eased in recent days with news from Beijing that the country’s top two shipbuilding groups – CSIC and CSSC – are seeking to merge themselves, a massive consolidation that will also need approval from anti-trust regulators across the world.