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Netherlands: World’s largest shipping company splitting up

By  |  September 22, 2016

After facing the twin pressures of  a worsening slowdown in global trade and slumping oil prices, Dutch conglomerate AP Moller-Maersk will separate its oil exploration and production, drilling rig, and oil tanker businesses into a new energy unit to be spun off, sold or merged with other companies.

Maersk will now focus its business on transport and logistics, putting Maersk Line, which controls 15 per cent of global container shipping, back at the heart of the 104-year-old company.

Maersk’s new chief executive, Soren Skou, said the short-term pressures of falling freight and oil prices were not behind the break-up but that it was rather a decade-long stagnation in revenues that sparked the rethink. “We are at a place where we need to rejuvenate growth in the company. That is the main driver of the strategy change,” he added.

Full Content: The Financial Times

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