In the container liner shipping market, 25 Major Shipping Companies have over 80 percent of market share. The M&A of major shipping companies create an oligopoly in container line service.
The purpose of this study is to analyze the world liner shipping trend, container traffic volume, container fleet, freight rate, charterage. The paper also investigates M&A activities of world container liner shipping companies from 1996 to 2005. The case studies are used to analyze major M&A in the shipping market, their causes, background, characteristics, service improvements, operational efficiency and response to competition along with the outcomes, the extent to which performance meets expectation.
As a result of this paper, the M&A's in liner shipping market, from middle of 1990's until 1999, occurred in order to overcome a market depression, increase market share and improve operational efficiency.
The M&A's which occurred in liner shipping market after 2000 are vertical M&A or diversification where companies merge and acquire container terminals, freight forwarder, IT company and other logistics companies.
This paper investigates four cases which are P&O/Nedlloyd, NOL/APL, Maersk/Sea-Land and P&O-Nedlloyd/Maersk-SeaLand.