Rocked by low freight and oil prices, Denmark’s A.P. Moller-Maersk will split into separate transport and energy divisions under a keenly anticipated revamp announced yesterday.
The 112-year-old conglomerate will focus on its core transport and logistics businesses, comprising Maersk Line, APM Terminals, Damco, Svitzer and Maersk Container Industry.
It said it would look for solutions for its oil and oil-related businesses within 24 months. They are to be separated from the main company either individually or in combination “in the form of joint-ventures, mergers or listing.”
Maersk Line chief executive Soren Skou, promoted to CEO of the entire company in June, will lead the restructuring and the company has appointed a new group chief financial officer, Jakob Stausholm, effective from Dec. 1.
Stausholm is currently in charge of strategy at Maersk Line
“Separating our transport and logistics businesses and our oil and oil-related businesses into two independent divisions will enable both to focus on their respective markets,” A.P. Moller-Maersk chairman Michael Pram Rasmussen said in a statement. “Both face very different underlying fundamentals and competitive environments.”
Maersk Line, the world’s biggest container shipping business, is suffering from record low freight rates as growth in global trade has failed to keep pace with a big expansion in shipping fleets.
The group’s oil business is struggling with a 60 percent drop in crude prices since mid-2014.
Last month, the group posted a second-quarter net profit of US$101 million, lagging the US$196 million expected by analysts.
The prospect of a structural reorganization sent the shares up as much as 12 percent on the day, as most investors expect the company to be worth more once its different parts are freed from the conglomerate structure.
The group was founded in 1904 by A.P. Moller and was turned into a conglomerate operating in 130 countries by his son, Maersk Mc-Kinney Moller.
Additional reporting by Bloomberg
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to