Maersk CFO exits amid restructuring

Jakob Stausholm, chief finance officer, chief strategy and transformation officer, and registered director of the A.P. Moller – Maersk will resign from the company by the end of the month, according to a statement from Maersk.    It’s been a rough couple of weeks for the Danish shipping conglomerate A.P. Moller – Maersk.
   After two separate fires onboard vessels belonging to container shipping subsidiary Maersk Line, one of which claimed the lives of five crew members, and reports its towage subsidiary Svitzer had been hacked, Jakob Stausholm, the group’s chief finance officer, chief strategy and transformation officer, and registered director, has announced he will resign from the company by the end of the month, according to a statement from Maersk.
   “It has been an honor and a pleasure to work for Maersk,” Stausholm said in a statement. “Søren Skou and the company has shown great confidence in me and I have been offered some of the most exciting job opportunities.”
   Stausholm added that although he “very much” agrees with the new organizational direction of the group, he has decided to pursue other opportunites “as a consequence of the change.”
   The news comes as the company is in the midst of a massive restructuring that has seen it divest units related to oil and gas and energy in an effort to focus on its core transportation and logistics offerings.
   Just last week, the group completed its sale of subsidiary Maersk Oil to French energy giant Total S.A. In doing so, the company transferred $2.5 billion in short-term debt and received 97.5 million Total shares worth roughly $5.6 billion at the time of the transaction.
   “With the completion of the Maersk Oil transaction, we have taken a significant step in our strategy to focus A.P. Moller – Maersk on container shipping, ports and logistics,” Group CEO Søren Skou said of the move.
   The company noted, however, that it has yet to find a “viable solution” – i.e. interested buyer – for its Maersk Drilling and Maersk Supply Service subsidiaries.
   “Improved market conditions in the offshore drilling industry, as well as strategic progress in both businesses, has raised A.P. Moller – Maersk’s confidence in finding structural solutions for both before the end of 2018,” the firm said, adding that for this reason, both units have been reclassified as “discontinued operations” for accounting purposes.
   A few weeks prior, Skou unveiled a company-wide initiative to provide fully integrated, technologically enabled supply chain solutions for all its customers. The goal of the initiative is for Maersk to become a “global integrator of container logistics” by providing simple end-to-end transportation services that will make it possible to arrange transportation by dealing only with Maersk, including inland transport, custom house brokerage, financing of goods, insurance, and consolidation, among other things.
   “We can do a better job for our customers,” Skou, told analysts at Maersk’s “capital markets day” presentation in Copenhagen, adding that the company also wants customers to be able to seamlessly engage with Maersk online. This means “digitizing” processes and allowing customers to “self-serve” when getting price quotes, booking cargo, creating or uploading documents, and paying their bills, all of which also speaks directly to those same heightened expectations in the e-commerce era.
   Or as Christian Pedersen, head of trade and marketing for Maersk Line North America, put it in an interview with American Shipper, “We want it to be as easy for a customer – regardless of their size – to move a container with Maersk as it is to buy a pair of sneakers online.
   “It’s not about creating a one-size-fits-all solution, because customers are all different; they have different needs and expectations,” he said. “It’s about creating a one-stop shop for customers of all sizes. It’s all about creating value.”
   In a nutshell, much of this recent push from Maersk into global integrated services is about branding. The company already owns a port terminal operator (APM Terminals) and freight forwarder (DAMCO), so the integration of these services is a logical step forward.
   The marketing effort associated with such an integration, however, becomes much more difficult when news headlines are dominated by vessel fires and alleged cyber attacks.