China-focused Clarksons veteran Martin Rowe is leaving the London Stock Exchange-listed ship brokerage for an undisclosed new position.
“I leave Clarksons with goodwill on both sides,” he told TradeWinds.
The sudden departure comes just over a year after Rowe had repatriated himself to England after more than a quarter of a century in Hong Kong.
The London-based secondhand sale-and-purchase director had announced his upcoming departure on his LinkedIn page over the weekend, in a statement he said he was reluctant to expand very much upon.
“After almost 17 fantastic years with Clarksons, I will be leaving the firm shortly after the end of the year,” he wrote, acknowledging gratitude to his former colleagues.
“However, exciting new horizons beckon for me in shipping for 2023 and beyond —watch this space!”
Rowe would not be drawn on whether his new role will be on the shipowning or shipbroking side but said he must sit out a gardening leave of a little over a month and then will have more to say after the new year.
“I’m not sure if that will be the Western or the Chinese New Year,” he said.
Rowe started his shipbroking career in London but has spent most of it in Hong Kong, most recently as head of Clarksons Asia — an operation spanning Singapore, Shanghai, Seoul, and Tokyo.
He made his start in Hong Kong in 1995 as a shipbroker for Simpson, Spence, Young, before moving to Clarksons in 2006. He has long family roots in the industry as well as his son Philip Rowe, who was a long-time head of P&I manager Thomas Miller in Greece.
He returned to London in the summer of 2021 to work from the Clarksons home desk, as Hong Kong was struggling with a controversial Covid-19 policy and the consequences of a new national security law imposed by Beijing.
Legal battle
The opening phase of Rowe’s tenure at Clarksons included the bitter and protracted legal battle with Mandarin Shipping chief executive Tim Huxley, Rowe’s predecessor at the helm of the Hong Kong operation.
The claims and counterclaims between the parties led to a blacklisting of Clarksons by Huxley allies including Chao family-owned Wah Kwong Shipping, which Huxley headed for many years after he departed from Clarksons.
