(Reuters) - Canadian Pacific Kansas City said on Wednesday it and U.S.-based Lanco Group have sold the Panama Canal Railway Company to a unit of Denmark’s Maersk , one of the world’s largest container shipping groups.
The Canadian railway company did not disclose terms of the deal, but added the deal would help it focus on its core assets in Canada, the U.S. and Mexico.
The acquisition “represents an attractive infrastructure investment in the region aligned to our core services of intermodal container movement,” said Keith Svendsen, CEO of Maersk’s unit APM Terminals.
Founded as a joint venture between units of Canadian Pacific and Lanco Group, the Panama Railway Company provides rail-based freight and passenger services along the canal. It posted a revenue of $77 million last year.
The deal comes at a time when U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration has threatened to take over the canal - built by the United States and returned to Panama in 1999 - over allegations of growing foreign presence, especially China.
Hong Kong’s CK Hutchison had last month agreed to sell key ports near the Panama Canal to a group led by BlackRock, which had eased some of the pressure from Trump.
However, the deal, originally expected to be signed this week, is now expected to be delayed over China’s criticism.
(Reporting by Aishwarya Jain in Bengaluru; Editing by Leroy Leo)
This goes back to when KCS was independent and saw this as a compliment to it’s Gulf Coast terminals. CPKC has Canadian ports and this probably looks like excess to them.
Then there is the conspiracy fiesta – a Canadian-run company suddenly selling a key (since a couple of years after 1998) United States asset to… a Danish logistics company (Greenland signaling?) that competes with Hutchison Whampoa…
I don’t think so but not sure if your joking. CEO Creel seems to me to be no nonsense pragmatic individual. Used to be a stockholder but currently CPKC is in the former rut CSX was in long ago of…no real increase to shareholder value over an extended period of time. I still hold UP though. UP can afford to be stagnant because they pay a decent dividend.
Apparently not. Those are ‘jungle-proof’ domestic AC grid wires. I read one account that noted considerable electrical supply for building or improving the Canal was provided via the existing or relocated railroad ROW.
The post-1998 rebuilding explicitly focused on Gunderson-style stack trains, and involved lowering the floor of the Miraflores tunnel, so we know the ‘cat bridges’ clear loaded doublestacks. That would likely not be true if anything were hanging under the portal frame.
