Posted on June 15, 2026
The Annual General Meeting has approved the so-called squeeze-out. This means that Port of Hamburg Beteiligungsgesellschaft will transfer all shares still held by minority shareholders to itself in exchange for a cash settlement. During the meeting, which lasted around 19hours, the Executive Board came under heavy criticism.
Shareholders approved the squeeze-out at Hamburger Hafen und Logistik AG, sought by Port of Hamburg Beteiligungsgesellschaft SE (PoH), on Thursday at the Annual General Meeting. As the port logistics company announced, this means that the majority shareholder will transfer the A-shares held by the remaining minority shareholders to itself in return for a cash settlement. This amounts to 21.16 euros per A-share.
The squeeze-out under company law will take legal effect upon entry in the commercial register. PoH, whose shares are held by the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg and the MSC Group, already holds more than 95 per cent of HHLA’s shares. HHLA is therefore no longer listed on the stock exchange.
19-hour meeting
At the Annual General Meeting, the minority shareholders present had strongly criticised the squeeze-out. Offering small investors approximately 21 euros, even though the share price at the 2007 IPO had been around 53 euros, amounted to “expropriation”, according to one shareholder representative. Among the investors were many small investors from Hamburg whom they now wanted to remove, said one shareholder representative.
Furthermore, HHLA decided not to pay out a dividend to investors for the financial year. The group justified this by citing necessary investments for which the money was required. In addition, there had been tax burdens. This point, too, met with fierce criticism from investors. It was “shameless”, said a representative of several small investors, to dismiss investors without a dividend, even though the operating business had been stable. In fact, HHLA had generated a 9.9 per cent increase in turnover in the 2025 financial year. EBIT rose by just under 20 per cent.
Markus Dufner from the umbrella organisation Kritische Aktionäre described the delisting as “the end of the people’s HHLA”. This would result in critical infrastructure being fully privatised, according to Dufner. Shareholder representatives submitted around 200 queries to the group. In total, the virtual AGM lasted almost 19hours. (lpz/cs)
