China has scuppered a deal to create a shipping alliance on the world’s three biggest trade routes in a sign of the increasingly muscular approach being taken by the country’s competition authorities.
AP Møller-Maersk, Mediterranean Shipping Company and CMA CGM had hoped to form the so-called P3 Network to reduce costs on Asia-Europe, trans-Pacific and transatlantic routes by pooling 250 ships. The companies abandoned their plans after China’s commerce ministry concluded the alliance was not in the public interest.
The tie-up was designed to shake up container shipping, synonymous with global trade, by reducing the chronic over-capacity that has caused most operators to be lossmaking. The deal stopped short of a full merger as the three companies, which together control 40 per cent of global seaborne trade, would have competed on price.