The world’s second-largest container shipping operator is about to have a new boss. Soren Skou, the CEO of A.P. Moller – Maersk, will retire at the end of this year. Vincent Clerc, currently CEO of the group’s ocean and logistics division, has been appointed the new CEO, effective Jan. 1.
“Now is the right time for Maersk, for Vincent, and for me to make this transition,” said Skou. “The company has executed very well over the past years.”
Skou has been with Maersk for almost 40 years, serving for eight years as CEO of Maersk Tankers and for four years as CEO of Maersk Line before being appointed the head of A.P. Moller – Maersk in 2016.
Clerc has worked for Maersk since 1998. He was appointed Maersk Line’s chief commercial officer in 2015 and CEO of the group’s ocean and logistics division in December 2019.
According to Robert Maersk Uggla, chairman of Maersk’s board, “The strong tailwinds that benefited the supply chain industries during the pandemic are coming to an end. With an increasingly challenging outlook, the board believes Vincent holds the right experience and capabilities as CEO to pursue and oversee Maersk’s strategic and organizational development in the years to come.”
Era of transformation continues
During his six-plus years as the helm, Skou oversaw a dramatic transformation of A.P. Moller – Maersk.
At the group level, the company sold its energy divisions and transformed itself from a conglomerate into a pure logistics business. The group sold its tanker division to its private entity, A.P Moller Holding, in 2018. Also that year, it sold Maersk Oil to Total S.A. In 2019, it demerged Maersk Drilling via a separate listing.
On the container shipping side, the company has focused on becoming an end-to-end logistics provider and not a commoditized ocean transportation provider. It expects this transformational strategy to pay off in the years ahead, as container shipping faces a slowdown.
Skou said on the latest conference call, “Our strategy is not to gain market share in ocean [shipping]. We’re not really defining ourselves anymore in terms of ocean volumes. Our strategy is to gain share of our customers’ wallet of logistics spend. We expect to grow [the logistics] side of the business significantly faster than the market, despite the slowdown.”
He continued, “One of the key goals of our strategic transformation is to break away from the cyclicality of the shipping industry and the commoditized nature of transactional container shipping. We remain convinced that creating closer relationships with customers and maintaining an intense focus on their needs is the way to do so.”
Era of massive profits winds down
Skou’s tenure as CEO also covered a period of unprecedented profits, as the container shipping industry reaped the rewards of pandemic-era consumer spending.
Between the second quarter of 2020 and the third quarter of 2022, A.P. Moller – Maersk posted total earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortization of $61.1 billion.
Clerc will face a very different market when he takes over in January. As Skou acknowledged on the latest call: “No doubt we have a challenging year or years ahead of us. The world faces a combination of geopolitical uncertainty and inflationary pressure that we haven’t seen in quite a number of decades. It gives us very strong comfort that we enter this period with a very strong balance sheet. We are prepared to weather the storm.”
Click for more articles by Greg Miller
Related articles:
- Container shipping rates still sinking, no sign yet of market floor
- Plunging spot rates drag down container shipping contract rates
- Zim flew higher in shipping boom, falls faster as market sinks
- Hapag-Lloyd CEO: Container market volatile but not collapsing
- US imports from China falling faster than from other countries
- End of an era: Profits finally peak for shipping giant Maersk