South Korean shipbuilder STX on Monday took a crucial step closer to becoming the world's leading ship builder by securing full management control of Norway's Aker Yards, Europe's biggest shipyard.
  
STX, which was bound under Norwegian law to make a full bid for Aker Yards after it passed a 40-percent ownership threshold in June, said Monday it had raised its stake in the group to 88.4 percent.
  
STX said it had acquired an additional 48 percent for 660 billion won (632 million dollars, 428 million euros).
  
The South Korean company will thus pay 63 Norwegian kroner (11.66 dollars, 7.92 euros) for each Aker Yards share, valuing the entire company at 6.84 billion kroner (1.27 billion dollars, 860 million euros).
  
"We have fully secured management control of Aker," a group spokesman told AFP, adding the transaction would be completed on August 29.
  
"It will help STX make inroads into cruise line construction," he said.
  
The spokesman said Aker Yards would be renamed STX Europa at a shareholders' meeting in early September.
  
"We will make Aker in Norway into a specialised offshore vessel manufacturing base while its yard in France will specialise in cruise ships and defence business."
  
STX, which ranks among the world's five top ship builders, has also been eagerly eying its compatriot Daewoo Shipbuilding and has said it intends to become the world leader in the sector.
  
The buy-out of Aker Yards, the world's leading ferry and cruise ship maker, will give the South Korean group access to a lucrative market that today is firmly in European hands.
  
Trade unions, especially in France, have expressed fears that increasingly powerful Asian shipbuilders will push the traditional European industry leaders out of the business altogether, as happened previously with tankers.
  
"There is a risk that our know-how will be pillaged and, as a consequence, jobs will be lost both inside the group and among subcontractors," said the French CGT union that represents workers at the Norwegian group's subsidiary Aker Yards France, in a statement on Monday.
  
In the run-up to Monday's announcement it was far from certain that STX would gain control of the Norwegian group.
  
Aker Yards said earlier this month that the offer underrates its potential, and analysts had pointed out that the 63-kroner-a-share offer was stingy compared to the 97 kroner STX paid per share for the first 40 percent of the company.
  
But when the Norwegian group presented devastating results for the third consecutive quarter on August 8, posting a second quarter net loss of 16.9 billion euros, a temporary slowdown in cruise-liner construction and downgrading its profit margins for the full year, the board grudgingly agreed to accept the offer.
  
"The board recommends shareholders to seriously consider accepting the offer," Aker Yards said in its earnings statement.
  
By gaining control of Aker Yards, STX also clears away any remaining doubts about a deal it clinched with Paris at the beginning of June concerning Aker Yards France, formerly known as Chantiers de l'Atlantique, apparently without informing the parent company first.
  
The deal was to sell the French state a 9.0-percent stake in Aker Yards France, which is 75-percent owned by Aker Yards.
  
Added to the 25 percent currently owned by French industrial giant Alstom, French interests would then amount to 34 percent.