Hamburg's Hapag-Lloyd has won a US$925 million loan with a banking syndicate made up of HSBC, Citibank, Deutsche Bank, KfW IPEX-Bank and UniCredit Bank. to finance the building of ten 13,200-TEU ships from Hyundai Heavy Industries.

The ships will be the largest in Hapag-Lloyd's fleet, and are to be delivered from mid-2012 through the end of 2013. The shipping company recently posted an operating loss of $31 million, but its quarterly EBIT grew 140pc to EUR6.1 million, drawn on revenues of EUR1.4 billion, up 16.5 per cent year on year.