Deutsche Bank to sell New Jersey container terminal unit

Deutsche Bank has agreed to sell a New Jersey container terminal business to a Macquarie Group infrastructure fund, another step in its exit from legacy assets.

Maher Terminals USA operates a 454-acre terminal in Port Elizabeth, near the New Jersey Turnpike and Newark Liberty International Airport. It will be sold to Macquarie Infrastructure Partners III for an undisclosed amount.

Maher moves more than 2 million twenty-foot-equivalent containers per year.

Deutsche Bank’s RREEF arm bought Maher Terminals LLC in 2007 from the Maher family for roughly $2.3 billion. At that time, robust trade growth contributed to high prices for port assets. But Maher saw depressed container volumes during the financial crisis, and Deutsche Bank took more than $1.5 billion of losses on the investment.

The Wall Street Journal reported in 2014 that Deutsche Bank was looking to sell all or part of Maher. Last year, Maher’s other facility, Fairview Container Terminal in British Columbia, was sold to DP World for 580 million Canadian dollars.

Deutsche Bank said the sale won’t have a material financial effect.

The New Jersey terminal was included in Deutsche Bank’s Non-Core Operations Unit, formed in 2012 in an effort to free up capital and reduce risk.

The Macquarie fund’s other recent activity has included participation in the roughly $3.4 billion purchase of utility holding company Cleco Corp.

Source: MarketWatch