The Danish connection Golden generation of industry leaders remains loyal to Maersk Line, which gave them a headstart in shipping Janet Porter janet.porter@informa @JanetPorter_LL Tuesday 07 October 2014, 09:20 More members of the class of 1977/1978: From left Jesper Kjaedegaard, Thomas Thune Andersen and Jan Kastrup Nielsen. MAERSK Line’s influence throughout the shipping industry and beyond is legendary. But it is not just what the Danish group is up to today that is having such an impact. Many other prominent ocean carriers, terminal operators, logistics companies and professional services firms have former Maersk high-flyers in senior positions — some at the very top. This is perhaps most apparent at fast-growing United Arab Shipping Co. Chief executive Jorn Hinge is one of the few Danes in the industry who has not worked directly for Maersk, having spent the early part of his career at East Asiatic Co and its joint venture liner company EacBen, which incidentally were subsequently acquired by the larger Danish group. But chief trade officer Lars Christiansen worked for Maersk for more than 20 years before joining UASC, as did chief commercial officer Uffe Østergaard, who was head of global marketing until he moved to Dubai last year. Franck Kayser, UASC’s global operations vice-president, is another ex-Maersk man. So too is Eric Williams, UASC’s head of sales and marketing. For some time, former Maersk Line executives tended to move to ports or logistics companies rather than other containership operators, but that has changed in recent years. Hamburg Süd executive board member Peter Frederiksen was chief commercial officer, then head of global liner relations at Maersk until he quit in 2008. Across the city, Hapag-Lloyd also has a former AP Moller-Maersk man in charge, although Rolf Habben Jansen’s background is a little different since he is a Dutch national and came from AP Moller-Maersk’s logistics division Damco rather than the container line. The forerunner, of course, was Flemming Jacobs, a former AP Moller-Maersk partner who created shockwaves in 1999 when he quit the group after almost 40 years to become group president and chief executive of Singapore’s NOL. He now sits on the boards of numerous prominent shipping companies and is secretary-general of Danish Maritime Days, a new industry event for the global maritime industry. Global players But it is those now in their fifties who are making such an impact far beyond the shores of Denmark, thanks largely to a unique education system. Rather than recruit university graduates, Maersk used to hire young management trainees in their late teens, direct from school, taking 25 to 30 each year. They received an initial two years of training, attending in-house shipping classes from 0800 hrs to 1000 hrs each morning, then working until 1700 hrs, followed by two evenings each week taking business and related courses at a local college in Copenhagen. After two years, trainees were sent overseas for18 months for further work experience. “It was probably one of the most sought-after education opportunities in Denmark at the time,” recalls one beneficiary of this programme. The class of 1977/1978 is now making a particular impression in the global arena, with former AP Moller-Maersk partners and Maersk Line joint chief executives Knud Stubkjaer and Tommy Thomsen both among the new intakes those years. Mr Stubkjaer is now chief executive of Seattle-headquartered Carrix, which owns SSA Marine, while Mr Thomsen was recently appointed managing director of Denmark’s Investment Fund for Developing Countries, IFU, having previously been chief executive of Nordic Tankers. Others hired then include Thomas Thune Andersen, chairman of Lloyd’s Register, J Lauritzen chief executive Jan Kastrup-Nielsen, Textainer Equipment Management chief Robert Pedersen, and Jesper Kjaedegaard, now a partner with Mercator International. Roll of honour A number of Maersk alumni are running port and stevedore businesses. In addition to Mr Stubkjaer, Michael Hassing is chief executive of the US terminal operator Ports America, having spent 25 years with Maersk including a spell as managing director of The Maersk Co in London. His successor in that job, Flemming Dalgaard, now works for DP World where he is the Dubai-based senior vice-president in charge of global corporate strategy. Another former managing director of The Maersk Co, Lars Vang Christensen, who spent 26 years with AP Moller-Maersk in total, is now chief executive of Epic Gas in Singapore. Container lines with former Maersk Line executives in senior positions include Samskip Multimodal Container Logistics, where Jens Holger Nielsen is chief executive, and APL, where Soren Andersen is now vice-president in charge of network planning, alliance management and fuel strategy. Joining Maersk straight from school rather than university, as many of these executives would have done, has not only given them a unique grounding in the business of shipping, but a certain distinct corporate style and etiquette that stays with them well after they have moved elsewhere. Moreover, having known each other from such a young age, then worked together for years, many have personal friendships that have endured long after they left Maersk, as well as a priceless global network of contacts. As one former senior Maersk manager told Containerisation International, “the Maersk shipping academy is a great asset to have on a CV and opens many doors within the international shipping community”. Apprentices The apprentice training scheme was formalised into Maersk International Shipping Education in 1993, students going through some very strict screening before being accepted. This programme was finally closed in 2009, with Maersk no longer accepting school-leavers but introducing a graduate trainee programme instead, similar to every other major international company. As Lars Jensen, another former Maersk Line employee, remarks, that marked the end of the old cultural understanding that a young trainee could work his or her way up through the system to aspire to virtually any position in the company. The maritime industry and other sectors suddenly benefited from a huge influx of top talent when several thousand jobs were cut by Maersk Line in the difficult years following the banking crisis that plunged the whole industry deep into the red, the cull including many of those marked out at an early stage for high office. But Mr Jensen, chief executive of the consultancy firm SeaIntel and author of the recently published Culture Shock in Maersk Line, questions whether those who benefited from this education system, which started in the 1970s as the Danish group was entering the container shipping trades, would fit into today’s Maersk. They are far too maverick. “Young employees were deliberately given assignments which were beyond their immediate skills and expertise,” he writes. But the expectation was that they would nevertheless handle the assignments to the manager’s satisfaction. “As long as you stayed within the framework of the company values of being decent, honest, trustworthy and a thorough person, you had a free rein in finding new solutions and opportunities.” Initiative Once promoted to a young country manager, these recruits were able to take initiative at local level without always having to check back to head office for permission. So while they were seen from the outside as very uniform in terms, for example, of dress code and their office decor, “underneath the surface, the anarchistic entrepreneurs reigned”. In other words, Maersk produced “a potent mix” of young entrepreneurial people, who might appear to bow to authority and conformity, “but who in reality thrive in a culture which not only provided extensive freedom, but actively expected that initiative was taken without prior approval”. Others agree. “That entrepreneurial spirit that was around in abundance has gone,” says another former senior Maersk Line executive who now works for himself. The level of freedom that many of Maersk’s homegrown high flyers enjoyed in the past is no longer acceptable as the current management seeks to squeeze costs as much as possible in an industry that is unlikely to benefit from a price recovery. That means strict head office control, far greater transparency at every level of the business, and no local fiefdoms. So those young apprenticeships who joined Maersk Line back in the 1970s are far better suited in small mid-size companies that have steep growth aspirations, and need flair and vision at the top, than in a mature industry leader that now has other priorities. Some have preferred to start companies of their own. As Mr Jensen told Containerisation International, “by personality, they do not fit into the new Maersk organisation — a lot of them are highly entrepreneurial, very good craftsmen and businessmen, and they really like to start new things, but in a process-driven organisation, you of course need some people with initiative and drive, but you cannot have your entire organisation made up of people like that.” He cites the large number of former Maersk Line managers who are now working for UASC. “To them, it is almost like being back at Maersk 20-25 years ago.” Golden generation The big question is whether, in the years ahead, Maersk will miss the competences of this “golden generation” who have taken their talent elsewhere. “Where is future growth going to come from?” asks one who left Maersk a few years ago. But while there may be mixed feelings among some of the former Maersk Line employees about the direction the company is taking now, there is no denying the strong financial performance. And even those who feel bitter about losing their jobs still retain “a phenomenal amount of loyalty towards Maersk,” Mr Jensen found when researching his book. “None of them talked badly about the company.” As he noted when interviewing 110 past and present employees about Maersk Line, “they quickly start talking about ‘we’ even if they have not worked for the company for five or six years”. That is the legacy of an investment in human resources that has spawned so many industry leaders — who still retain a huge amount of goodwill towards Maersk Line, the company that gave them a head start in the corporate world. This article appears in the October edition of Containerisation International
Posted on: Wed, 08 Oct 2014 11:28:19 +0000