One of the shareholders in Hapag-Lloyd AG, TUI AG, has laid out plans to exit from its stake in Germany's biggest container shipping company. The exit, according to TUI AG CEO Friedrich Joussen, would be made through an IPO scheduled for the second half of 2014.

Joussen further said that placing his company's 22% shareholdings in the market would only 'waste value'. He added it would make more business sense to await the time when the new CEO Rolf Habben-Jansen takes over the reins of the company next year. He made the remarks to reporters at a Hamburg press club last night. The assumption to the office of CEO would be precipitated by the assumption of Houben-Joussen as a member of the board.

Accordng to Joussen, "Even if a good moment for an IPO would be 2015, I wouldn't have a problem with that." He added the 'desire' for an IPO with Hapag-Lloyd shareholders had increased in the past half year. The other shareholders are the city of Hamburg and billionaire Klaus-Michael Kuehne.

TUI for its part, is the largest travel company in Europe. It had repeatedly signified its intention to exit its shareholdings in the container line through an IPO or share sale when the market condition improve.