The owners of Hapag-Lloyd AG have postponed a decision on floating the container shipping group, its majority owner said.

"There will be no decision on an IPO (initial public offering) today," a spokesman for the Albert Ballin consortium, which owns 50.2 percent of Hapag-Lloyd, said citing an uncertain capital market environment.

The supervisory board of TUI AG , which owns almost to half of Hapag-Lloyd, gave the go-ahead on March 3 for a possible IPO and a person close to Hapag-Lloyd's owners said at the time the company would list on April 15.

A source told Reuters on Monday an initial public offering (IPO) of the world's fifth-biggest container shipper could still happen by the end of June.

TUI declined to comment.

A listing of Hapag-Lloyd could be the biggest in Germany in more than three years and a first step in the strategic reshuffle of parent company TUI, which has said its wants to concentrate on its tourism business.

But stock markets worldwide have dropped a Japanese nuclear crisis added to existing concerns about political unrest in the Middle East and rising oil prices, and several planned IPOs have been called off or delayed.

Private equity firm Apollo Global Management LLC decided to lower their price range. Earlier this month, a person close to Hapag-Lloyd's owners said TUI will sell up to 30 percent of the company in an IPO, plus another 350 million euros ($496.5 million) worth of new shares.

Reports have valued Hapag-Lloyd, the world's fifth-largest container shipping line, at between 3 billion and 3.5 billion euros, meaning a placement of 30 percent could have a value of around 1 billion euros.

TUI, which started life as a mining and steel company in 1924, is expected by analysts to use the proceeds from any IPO of its shipping stake to buy back the shares it does not own in London-listed subsidiary TUI Travel Plc , sharpening its focus on tourism, although it has never confirmed any such plans.

Credit Suisse Group AG, Goldman Sachs Group Inc and Deutsche Bank AG are global coordinators for the IPO. Citigroup IncHSBC, JP Morgan and UniCredit SpA are co-bookrunners.

Co-lead managers are M.M. Warburg, Berenberg Bank, DZ Bank and NordLB -- all German lenders. (Reuters)