COSCOCS: China’s new shipping giant, hoping to sail through the downturn

It’s pretty safe to say that the jury remains out on their choice of abbreviation – we can’t help thinking that Cosco CS might have been a little less open to alternative interpretation/pronunciation… but anyway, the merger between China’s two state-owned shipping lines Cosco and China Shipping has been formally unveiled at a ceremony in Shanghai. And what true behemoth it is – a fleet of 830 container, tanker and dry bulk vessels, with a book value vesselsvalue.com puts at double that of Maersk and MOL together. But the bigger they are, the harder they sometimes fall, and analysts believe that reassuring its 180,000 staff that there will be no lay-offs or salary cuts in the midst of the worst shipping recession in living memory is a big opportunity lost.