Shipping executive Arthur Novacek dies

Shipping executive Arthur Novacek dies Veteran shipping executive Arthur C. Novacek, 80, died Feb. 10 in Florida.
   Novacek's career highlights covered landmark events from pioneering the concept of 'landbridge' trains in the early 1970s to the controversy surrounding the Dubai Ports World acquisition of P&O Ports in 2006. He spent the final decades of his career with Eller & Co., the Florida stevedoring and terminal management company, from which he retired as president and chief executive officer in August 2006 after 60 years in the industry. Novacek had been with the company since 1983. He had initially retired as president and CEO in September of 2000, but returned at the request of the board of directors in August 2004 for another two years.
   It was during his final year with Eller that the company attracted national attention when it mounted a legal challenge of the Dubai Ports World acquisition of P&O Ports.
   P&O Ports North America owned a 50 percent stake in the Port of Miami Terminal Operating Co. (POMTOC). But Continental Stevedoring & Terminals Inc., a subsidiary of Fort Lauderdale-based Eller & Co., also owned 25 percent of POMTOC. Eller was already embroiled in a Florida court battle with P&O when the DP World controversy erupted. Eller opposed P&O's 2003 purchase of Miami-based Oceanic Stevedoring, which raised P&O's stake in POMTOC to 50 percent. P&O originally came into the picture in 1999, when it acquired ITO Co., another 25 percent owner of POMTOC. That initial P&O move in Miami also made P&O a 50 percent owner of Eller-ITO, a separate stevedoring company.
   The other 25 percent of POMTOC is owned by Florida Stevedoring, an independent local stevedoring company.
   Eller said it was opposed to the DP World deal because it did not want to become a partner with a company ultimately owned by the government of Dubai. Eller, working with Washington attorney and lobbyist Joseph Muldoon — now president of Eller — led an early lobbying effort against the deal in Congress when DP World was in a bidding war for P&O Ports.
   Legal challenges to the deal in both Florida and London were eventually dismissed, but Eller played a key role in attracting widespread attention to the DP World, ultimately leading to political opposition that prompted DP World to agree to sell P&O Port North America operations to U.S. owners. P&O's former U.S. operations are now controlled by Ports America, a subsidiary of the insurance giant AIG.
   But long before the DP World controversy, Novacek had been in the thick of shipping history.
   A graduate of the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy at Kings Point, N.Y., Novacek started his career on 'Steamship Row' on the Manhattan waterfront in the 1940s.
   He started his career with Isbrandtsen Co., and eventually worked his way up to executive positions at shipping lines that included Grace Line, Transamerican Trailer Transport, and Seatrain Line.
   At Seatrain, he was involved with the development of the first 'landbridge' trains in 1972, which moved containers on rail flatcars from New York to Los Angeles.
   Novacek also headed the U.S. agency for Far Eastern Steamship Co. (FESCO), during the height of the Cold War, when FESCO was an auxiliary of the Soviet Navy.
   Prior to joining Eller, Novacek was also involved in the Puerto Rico trade, working as an executive with Navieras de Puerto Rico, the former carrier owned by the government of Puerto Rico.
   In the latter part of his career, Novacek became ensnared in legal trouble for a period. He pleaded guilty in September 2000 to making an illegal campaign contribution, authorizing a $1,000 contribution to the 1996 campaign of Perry Harvey, an ILA local president in Tampa who was running for county commissioner in Hillsborough County. The contribution was considered to be a violation of the anti-bribery provision of Taft Hartley Act. Harvey's ILA local represented Eller's Tampa employees, and the law forbids employers from paying money or providing other considerations of value to officers of a labor union. Novacek agreed to cooperate with a government investigation into ILA activities as part of a plea agreement.
   At that time he also stepped down as president of Eller, although he continued to act as a consultant to the company. He returned to his old job four years latter for one final stint at the helm. ' Jim Dow