For more than four years, South Korea’s flagship carrier has been known officially as HMM, a rebrand that seemingly has been lost on regulators in Washington.
The Federal Maritime Commission (FMC) in the US yesterday classified HMM – which it called by its old name, Hyundai Merchant Marine – as a controlled carrier.
Controlled carriers are ocean common carriers operating in the US-foreign trades that are, or whose operating assets are, directly or indirectly owned or controlled by a foreign government. Efforts to privatise HMM last year fell through with state creditors still in charge of the shipping company.
China’s COSCO and its subsidiary OOCL are among the biggest names on the FMC’s controlled carrier list.
