The world's largest shipping company has moved its headquarters and forgot to tell.
Portuguese cabinet staff were surprised to learn recently that a member of its country's government had been scheduled to visit a vacant Shanghai office, where China Cosco Shipping used to be.
Ana Paula Vitorino, Portugal's minister of the sea, had just got back to town after accepting China's newly created title of Global Ocean Ambassador in the port island of Zhoushan, when Portuguese diplomats discovered just in time that Cosco was no longer in its old headquarters conveniently around the corner from her room at the Peninsula Hotel.
Vitorino's UK counterpart, minister for shipping Nusrat Ghani, had visited Cosco chairman Xu Lirong just a week before at Cosco's stylish but increasingly cramped headquarters near the city's international cruise terminal.
Cosco had inherited the modern riverside offices from Xu's former company, China Shipping Group (CSG), after Cosco absorbed CSG and moved its headquarters from Beijing.
Ghani was to be the last dignitary to call there, and Vitorino was the first at its newly completed home — miles upstream on the other side of the Huangpu River — whose construction was announced soon after the merger.
The change of address had been announced on the main Cosco website, but a Cosco official told TradeWinds that no festivities were held to inaugurate the new headquarters and none are scheduled.
