Consolidation within the container space still has a way to go whereby there will be as few as just five global liners a decade from now, the head of AP Moller-Maersk has predicted in an interview with the Financial Times. Soren Skou, speaking ahead of Wednesday’s quarterly results, said the wave of merger and acquisitions seen in the past couple of years was not over.
“My prediction would be that the industry would consolidate further. A decade from now, we would be more in the five to six range,” he said.
Skou also made his first public comments about the cyber attack that crippled Maersk’s IT systems six weeks ago.
“I don’t think if I’d been asked before these attacks [could a hacker take down all our IT systems in 24 hours] I would have agreed . . . We need to do whatever we can to defend ourselves against hacking. We need to make sure we can shut it down, isolate [the infected systems] and restore [the rest] quickly,” Skou said.
Maersk’s quarterly results later this week will show just how much the cyber attack cost the Danish conglomerate.
In the day and age that we are in “A decade from now” is more of a metaphor! One may take it with a pinch of salt that a decade from now will AP Moeller-Maersk be in existence as a Container Liner!! Perhaps another metaphor?