The U.S. Federal Maritime Commission, which is in charge of regulating the maritime transport system announced yesterday that it had included the South Korean HMM on the list of "controlled carriers", i.e. ocean shipping carriers operating between the U.S. and abroad and which are, or whose activities are, are directly or indirectly controlled by governments Foreign. Prior to the inclusion of the South Korean company, in previously known as Hyundai Merchant Marine, the list of controlled carriers included only China's COSCO Shipping Lines, Orient Overseas Container Line (OOCL), OOCL (Europe) Ltd. and Hede (Hong Kong) International Shipping. With the latest revision of the last February, which included Hede and COSCO Shipping Lines (Europe) GmbH has been deleted as it is no longer operating on scheduled routes with the United States.

The ocean carriers included in the list are subject to a increased scrutiny by the FMC Committee. Among the provisions that the Federal Maritime Commission may impose on These controlled carriers there is a prohibition on enforcement of freight, tariffs, surcharges, rules and regulations that the carrier does not have fair and reasonable. In particular, that power is aimed at preventing shipping companies, whose decisions may be influenced by foreign governments or access to non-market capital, can practice lower than market rates, harming traffic and competing companies.

Despite repeated and vain attempts to privatize HMM, The capital of the South Korean shipping company is still controlled by the state-owned Korea Ocean Business Corporation (KOBC), which was established in 2018 to support the liquidity of national shipping carriers and holds 28.68% of the capital of HMM, and the state-owned bank for the Korea Development Bank (KDB), which owns 29.20%.