Hanjin Shipping Rely on Assets Sale
As part of its plans to ramp up debt restructuring and struggle to stay afloat amid the tides of trouble, the Korean shipping line Hanjin Shipping is looking at selling assets, reports The Korea Herald.
Hanjin is looking at offloading an office building in London as well as terminals at home and overseas to cut its debt ratio. Hanjin Shipping's, one of South Korea's largest carriers, current debt ratio is about 600 percent.
Among the items being eyed for sale are an office building on London’s Pepper Street and shipping terminals, including one in Korea’s southwestern port of Gwangyang, local reports said.
“(Various plans) are under consideration to secure liquidity and improve finances, but nothing has been decided yet,” the company said in a Korea Stock Exchange filing.
It added that the company will disclose further information in detail after it decides on the matter within six months.
The company is seeking to pay off some debt to make it eligible for the government-led 1.4 trillion won plan to bail out ailing shippers. The capital is available to lines that have reduced their debt ratios to less than 400%.
Earlier, Hanjin’s co-CEO Seok Tae Soo said that the company is working towards paying off debt and normalise operations.
Seok said, “We have succeeded in turning in an operating profit in the last two years as we did our best in a difficult operating environment, and once again, I avow that we have the abiliy to overcome the crisis. We will not stop here and through relentless reforms and change, we will break the frontiers of the market and continue to work towards the normalisation of our operations.”
