In the coming year Maersk will be so busy integrating Hamburg Süd into the business, it will not be eligible to participate in any further consolidation in the container sector in 2017. This is stated by Søren Skou, CEO of Maersk Group, in an interview with Bloomberg from the summit in Davos.
The number of consolidations among the container companies in 2016 surprised Søren Skou, CEO of Maersk Group.
"We were all very surprised by the number of consolidations in the last year. We saw a total of six transactions being announced during the year. We entered 2016 with 16 global container shipping companies of importance and about seven were either purchased or included in consolidations over the year," says Søren Skou in an interview with Bloomberg TV from the summit in Davos. On Bloomberg's question about whether Maersk will participate in consolidations in 2017, Søren Skou said: "We certainly need to absorb the acquisition of the Hamburg Süd, before doing anything else. We expect to have the authorities approval of the acquisition by the end of this year and then we can go ahead with integration." So, Maersk will not look for new opportunities in the area until at least 2018 confirms Søren Skou in the Bloomberg interview. Although the Maersk CEO expects that demand in the container market will increase slightly compared to last year, it does not necessarily mean that rates will continue the increase which has been seen since the price war culminated in March last year. "What really matters to freight rates is the way shipping companies choose to utilize capacity. There is plenty of spare capacity in the market, so if you want to use more, you can easily do that," says Søren Skou. Regarding Maersk Energy's future after the split between the group's energy and transportation companies, Søren Skou says that nothing has been decided yet, but that Maersk Energy is likely to be publicly listed. Source: Maersk / Maritime Denmark  |
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