The Danish shipping company Maersk and the Swiss-based global market leader MSC will be going their separate ways in future. Maersk, the world's number two container shipping company, announced on Wednesday that it will end its alliance with the Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC), known as 2M, in 2025 in order to pursue its own strategies. After ten years, this marks the end of the alliance that the two shipping companies had entered into in order to coordinate routes and the occupancy of their ships. The EU tolerated such alliances during the shipping crisis in the middle of the last decade because the shipping companies remained operationally independent and assumed that competition would not be restricted as a result.

For the ports, however, such mergers meant that the shipping companies gained greater influence over where the goods went. This allowed the shipping companies to influence the prices at the terminals. A total of three alliances were formed at the time: 2M, "THE Alliance", which included Hapag-Lloyd, and the "Ocean Alliance" with CMA CGM, Cosco and others. The shipping companies had previously engaged in a ruinous price war, which led to several takeovers.

The container shipping companies have long since put the crisis behind them and are now earning handsomely. During the coronavirus crisis, profits skyrocketed because transport capacities were scarce and freight prices rose rapidly. Supply chains are now easing as the global economy slows down.

(Report by Jacob Gronholt-Pedersen, written by Jan C. Schwartz. If you have any questions, please contact our editorial team at berlin.newsroom@thomsonreuters.com (for politics and the economy) or frankfurt.newsroom@thomsonreuters.com (for companies and markets).)