Personality of the Shipping Empery

Reporter Xing Dan

With a history of more than one hundred years, MAERSK and its shipping empery have become steadier and stronger after experiencing all economic crises during the period.Facing a good number of strong competitors, the powerful personality of MAERSK has been fully revealed. It is still maintaining the No.1 position in the global shipping sector thanks to its persistent innovation and breakthrough.

Reviewing the history of MAERSK, we can find that since Masersk exceeded Taiwan’s Evergreen to become the leader of the shipping industry in the late 1990s, its position has not been shaken up to now. Msersk has left his rival, the world’s No.2, far behind. All this can be proved by the history of Maersk’s three mergers and aquisitions.

However, after the fi nancial crisis in 2008, shipping market recovered slowly and there is no shipping company closed down for merger and acquisition. In addition,facing the internal and external pressure from its biggest competitor MSC and other shipping companies’ fast expansion, Maersk had to break conventions and took fresh strategies to seek another opportunity for expansion.So after returning to profitability in 2011, Maersk did not insist on conservative operation like other shipping companies, but took actions that surprised the shipping industry, such as ordering 20 18,000TEU container ships and introducing a new service named “Daily Maersk”.Maersk’s intention of seizing market share and seeking further expansion is very distinct.

As the leader of shipping market, Maersk has always been steering the tide and continuously seeking breakthrough and innovation. Firstly, Maersk has been pursuing the scale benefi t, and especially in development of large size ships, it has always been acting as a pioneer to lead the market. Secondly, Maersk has always been attempting its innovative management concept. Although Maersk’s pioneering actions have aroused many debates in the shipping sector, its courage to strive for its rights and interests has indeed brought a shock to industry players.

As the big mac of the world shipping industry, Maersk has kept a good management situation in the past one hundred years, and maintained the world’s No. 1 position for more than one decade. To a great extent, that is due to its strong personality and concept of nonalignment. To avoid to be enslaved to others, Maersk has not only taken shipping as its core business, but continuously developed the upstream and downstream industries. It has owned shipyards, ports, and logistics to support internalization of its external operation. Meanwhile, depending on its strong power and influence, Maersk has stuck to autonomy by operating shipping routes by itself instead of aligning with other shipping companies. To avoid risk and get suffi cient fund, Maersk also invests in oil exploration and related industries. So, the domain of “Maersk Empery” is getting larger and larger, and its “root” is also becoming fi rmer.