TOP STORY
Norwegian shipbroking giant Fearnleys is in talks to buy UK-headquartered Ocean Shipbrokers as the company looks to splash its cash on growing its broking arm globally.
Multiple well-placed sources in the global shipbroking community said Fearnleys is set to take over Ocean, with several indicating to TradeWinds that a deal has been agreed in principle between the two companies.
Outstanding result| Clarksons chief executive Andi Case says he wants the headlines to be about the fact Clarksons has generated an “outstanding” result for the first six months of the year amid shipping markets that are a patchwork of everything from decent to mediocre. The London-headquartered shop booked its best-ever results for the first half of the year, aided by a strong performance from its shipbroking activities.
New Stolt boss | Chemical tanker giant Stolt-Nielsen will be run by an executive from outside of the founding family for the first time after chief executive Niels Stolt-Nielsen announced he is stepping down after 23 years. Udo Lange, formerly of logistics firm FedEx Express, will take over from 1 September.
Order appetite | MSC Mediterranean Shipping Company’s appetite for newbuildings continues unabated, with the Swiss liner giant spending about $1.3bn on 10 LNG dual-fuelled neo-panamax container ships.
Black Sea risk rates | The war risk insurance market is ready to hike rates in response to a possible escalation of attacks on commercial shipping in the Black Sea. As the London market opened for business following a Ukraine drone attack on the Russian-flag tanker, rates were still around 1% of insured values.
If you think the box market is bad now, things could get a lot worse still, argues TradeWinds’ editor-in-chief Julian Bray.
Falling trade due to high inflation and interest rates has hit the container market, but a record surge in new ship deliveries threatens a knock-out blow
Jeremy Nixon, chief executive of Ocean Network Express (ONE), remains bullish about the future of the liner sector despite the company having just reported an almost $5bn year-on-year profit drop in its second-quarter results.
Speaking to TradeWinds’ Jonathan Boonzaier, Nixon described the astonishingly high profits that ONE and its liner sector peers made in 2021 and 2022 as an exceptional phenomenon caused by a specific set of events and not one that was expected to go on indefinitely.
This week’s Streetwise looks at why Scorpio Group finally decided the time was right to invest in its Irish rival Ardmore.
It only took a decade for Scorpio to warm up to the Irish product tanker owner, taking a 5.33% stake in the Anthony Gurnee-led company in July.
Joe Brady looks back at the chequered history between the pair.
