New Maersk CEO: Box trade not growing enough, not profitable enough

CONTAINER shipping is not growing fast enough and not profitable enough AP Moller Maersk's new CEO Nils Smedegaard Andersen told the Financial Times of London within hours of assuming office.

"When you have a problem that cannot be fixed in a few months, it's because it's a composite problem," said Mr. Anderson, the ex- Carlsberg brewery CEO who was picked as Mr Fix-It to restore the world's biggest container line market share that had been eroding under its old management.

"What we have to do is really focus on holistic solutions. Improving returns is the first priority," said Mr Anderson.

The container division, he said, will concentrate on finding the right routes and pricing. "We just have to get better and better all the time. There's no way you can take a quick decision and everything is good. This is about improving the way we work day-to-day," he told the London newspaper.

Losses at the container division depressed last year's earnings at the group, which produced pre-tax profits for 2006 of US$6.05 billion on $44.5 billion revenue.

Mr Andersen arrived after a management shake-up in June when two senior executives, Tommy Thomsen and Knud Stubkjaer, were sacked with CEO Jess Soderberg, two years ahead of his scheduled retirement.

This followed what many considered a botched integration of computer systems in the 2005 merger with P&O Nedlloyd, once the world's third largest container line.