FRANKFURT: ThyssenKrupp, Germany's biggest steelmaker, has scrapped a deal for Abu Dhabi MAR to buy its Blohm Voss civilian shipbuilding assets, citing political changes in the Middle East. ThyssenKrupp – which also builds submarines, mega-yachts, engineering plants and elevators – said Friday a separate planned joint venture with ADM to sell naval surface ships to the Middle East and North Africa had also fallen apart. It also said it had won a contract worth about 2 billion euros ($2.8 billion) to build six Class 214 submarines for Turkey and affirmed its strategy of focusing only on military shipbuilding. Management board member Olaf Berlien told reporters the commercial drivers for a deal no longer existed because the political landscape in the Middle East had changed. An existing deal for ADM to buy the civilian shipbuilding assets from HDW Gaarden in the northern German city of Kiel – where mega-yachts and container ships are made – remained in place, ThyssenKrupp said. ADM, a shipbuilding group owned by the Al Ain International Group and Privinvest, and ThyssenKrupp originally signed the agreements in 2009. The deal came after Germany's shipbuilding industry, the largest in Europe, slumped in the recession and as clients ran into financing problems.
