FT: Shipping giant Maersk steams ahead with break-up plans (sub required)

© Sheila Fitzgerald |

The Financial Times reports: “Few industrial groups have undergone so radical a break-up in recent years as AP Moller-Maersk, the world’s biggest container shipping line. The Danish group has lopped off its oil and gas and tankers businesses and is hoping to spin off its drilling rig unit this year. But Denmark’s biggest company by revenues — now centred on container shipping and logistics — faces a demanding time. Not only is its core business of transporting seaborne freight under strain from the prospect of a US-China trade war and a slowing global economy, but its profitability and cost control have slipped too. Difficulty unloading some of its businesses — its oil drilling unit is being demerged rather than sold outright — means that debt remains stubbornly high, and so Maersk could have to sit out the consolidation in the logistics industry despite its ambitions to become a container version of UPS or FedEx.”