Shipping line Maersk appoints new chief to deal with ‘challenging outlook’

AP Møller-Maersk has changed its chief executive as the world’s second-largest container shipping line faces “an increasingly challenging outlook”.

Søren Skou, 58, a Maersk veteran of 40 years and chief executive for the past seven, will leave at the end of the year. He will be replaced by Vincent Clerc, head of the Danish group’s ocean and logistics business.

Robert Uggla, Maersk’s chair, thanked Skou for transforming the company from a sprawling conglomerate into a more focused shipping and logistics group.

He told the Financial Times his starting point was: “How do we make sure we have a CEO full of energy?”

He added that Clerc would have to deal with an “increasingly challenging outlook” as Maersk is set to deliver record results this year but “have some difficult years ahead”.

Maersk, one of the engines of globalisation by carrying one in five seaborne containers, is facing up to a slowdown in shipping that has caused its shares to fall almost 40 per cent this year after two boom years. It also faces longer-term issues such as making its vessels emissions-free.

Clerc, a 50-year-old Swiss who joined Maersk in 1997, will be the first non-Dane to lead Maersk in its 118-year history and only its sixth-ever chief executive.

“There is no doubt that we are entering a very different season for the next year. It’s going to require all our focus to make sure we deal with it in the best possible way,” he said.

He added that there would be no “big U-turn” in terms of strategy but that any “differences in style will be more dictated by the fact that circumstances are changing”.

Drewry, the shipping research group, estimates container shipping groups will make as much money in 2020-22 as they did in the previous six-decade history of the industry.

Skou has used those bumper profits to bulk up Maersk’s logistics business to provide a balance to its dominant container shipping arm.

The outgoing chief executive said: “Now is the right time for Maersk, for Vincent and for me to make this transition. The company has executed very well over the past years. We have never been stronger financially and we have an inspiring and visionary plan for the continuation of our global integrator strategy that will guide Maersk for many years to come.”

Maersk’s shares, which quintupled during the Covid-19 pandemic only to fall back this year, dropped another 2 per cent on the news.

The Danish group is judged by experts to be leading the container shipping industry in looking for green fuels to power its vessels over the next decades, having ordered a dozen that will run on green methanol.

Clerc said Maersk was not “chasing a solution which is not there”. “It’s not a R&D problem, it’s an engineering problem of scaling the solutions,” he added, arguing that it would be an “enormous business opportunity” once scale is reached.

Uggla, who is from the fifth generation of Maersk’s founding family and became chair in March, said he had devoted a lot of time to CEO succession and had decided now was the right time for a change.

“We get a new CEO with new energy and enthusiasm who holds a longer perspective on some of the changes that are needed in the coming years. We have a robust strategy, but the world around us is changing rapidly,” Uggla added.