The logistics entrepreneur and billionaire Klaus-Michael Kühne is allowed to become the largest shareholder in Deutsche Lufthansa AG. The Federal Cartel Office has approved the increase in its shareholding from 10 percent to 15.01 percent, as reported in Bonn on Wednesday.
It is true that Kuehne Nagel International is one of the world’s largest logistics providers and has already been a major customer of Lufthansa’s freight division. Competitive disadvantages for the competition are not to be feared, the cartel office decided.
“Even if, as a result of Kühne’s participation in Lufthansa, less free capacity would be available for other air freight customers in the future, they would still have enough alternatives,” said President Andreas Mundt. Capacity bottlenecks played a lesser role in air freight than in the passenger business. An increasing supply of freight capacity is also to be expected.
Kuehne is the majority shareholder of the logistics group Kuehne Nagel and a major shareholder in the Hamburg container shipping company Hapag-Lloyd.
Communication from the Federal Cartel Office
