the EU commission has authorized the fusion between the shipowning groups CMA CGM and NOL



The EU commission has expressed to seem favorable, to determined conditions, the fusion between the French shipowning group CMA CGM and the Neptune Orient Lines (NOL) of Singapore, project based on which the transalpine group, that it has a fleet of 470 ships, will buy the Asian company, than work a fleet of 94 portacontainer employees under brand APL ( on 7 December 2015). The concentration will create to a group that will stop a quota pairs to 11.5% of the market of the transport of line (8.8% CMA CGM and 2.7% NOL) and that it will by sea enliven containerized volumes pairs to 17,9 million teu per year with a fleet of the hold ability pairs to 2,4 million teu.

The authorization of Brussels is subordinated to the escape of the APL from the shipowning alliance G6 that, besides the company of navigation of the group of Singapore, is formed by the Hapag-Lloyd German, the South Korean Hyundai Merchant Marine (HMM), by the Japanese Mitsui O.S.K. Lines (MOL) and Nippon Yusen Kaisha (NYK) and from the Orient Overseas Container Linens (OOCL) of Hong Kong and is instituted at the end of 2011 ( on 20 December 2011).

Improbable that this year the fusion operation compromises the operating activity of the G6, as it is moreover reassured by the same companies of the alliance ( of 11 Decembers 2015). He is obvious however that the recent acceleration of the series of concentrations in existence in the field of the marine transport of line will involve unavoidably a redefinition of the orders of the main shipowning alliances, if not quite a reconsideration of their role in the market.

If the escape of the APL/NOL from the G6 will determine for the others five companies of the alliance the necessity to estimate if to reorganize the forces on hand or if to decide to enter various roads, also the most recent announcement of the Hapag-Lloyd German of having under consideration a project the fusion of the activities in the field of the container with the Middle Eastern United Arab Shipping Company (UASC) ( on 21 April 2016) it could involve a change of route for another shipowning alliance, the Ocean Three (O3), that more from two year ago is constituted little and sees the UASC beside same CMA CGM and of the Chinese Lowers Shipping Container Lines (CSCL) ( on 9 September 2014). This without to estimate the effects, still to the point, of the fusion between the shipowning group Lowers Shipping (Group) Co., to which the CSCL is under responsibility, with the compatriot COSCO from which two months ago China COSCO Shipping Corporation has been born ( on 18 February 2016).

In examining the project of fusion between CMA CGM and NOL, the EU commission has explained to have with concern stated that the concentration will create ties between the alliances G6 and O3. This to tell the truth, considering ulterior the probable dilution of the relationships that hold these together and other shipowning consortia, seems not groundless an excessive fear if. Any can be the destiny of these alliances, in this case the worry of the Commission was however time to ascertain that new the potential ties between G6 and Ocean Three did not produce anti-competitive effects in particular on two commercial routes, that between the Europe North and the America North and that between the Europe North and the Middle East. According to Brussels, in fact, the competition on these marine routes by navigation companies that do not have ties with the new concentration or its partner of the alliance is insufficient and this - it has evidenced the Commission - would have allowed with the new concentration, through the shipowning consortia whom the societies comprise both, of being able to influence the abilities to hold employed on these routes and therefore to influence the rates of marine transport.

In order to ask for this risk the EU commission has obtained from CMA CGM and NOL the engagement - it is from seeing disliked and onerous how much - to avoid that it came to establish a tie between the O3 alliance and the G6 alliance. That such engagement is not evidently onerous neither for CMA CGM neither for the NOL has confirmed it the same Commission that has remembered as CMA CGM has already announced publicly the intention to withdraw the NOL from the G6 alliance after the acquisition of the company of Singapore, escape that however - it has confirmed the Commission - will not happen on March 31, 2017 before, expiration date of the agreement currently in vigor between the partner, to the aim to assure a disciplined escape of the company from the alliance.

The Commission has specified that the engagements assumed from CMA CGM and Nol preview moreover that a fiduciary assures that no information that it could have anti-competitive effects will be exchanged between the alliance and the new concentration in the period that will precede the escape of the APL from the G6.

He seems obvious that the EU commission will demand to Hapag-Lloyd and UASC the same engagements if the two companies had to reach to notify their project of fusion to Brussels.

The fusion between CMA CGM and NOL will have to be authorized from other authorities, between which one of the main ones she is the Maritime American Federal Commission (FMC). To such purpose last month the president of the American federal agency, Mario Cordero, in occasion of a audition near the Commission Transports and infrastructures of the House of representative, had found the remarkable impact on the market of the concentrations CMA CGM-NOL and COSCO-Lower Shipping: "it is CMA CGM that the COSCO - it had observed - will grow as dimensions, ability, market share and verosimilmente also in terms of being able on the market. The FMC - Cordero had remembered - has the crucial responsibility to estimate possible changes in the market and to analyze of the impact on the loaders. The transactions of CMA CGM and COSCO are complex and all-out. Not there is doubt - it had concluded the president of the Federal Maritime Commission - than if these two operations will be approved of will represent revolutionary changes in the market of the containerized transport marine that will demand careful and continuous analyses for a sure period of time".