Maersk says to compete with UPS, Fedex as conglomerate breaks up

[February 20, 2018]   By Stine Jacobsen

COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - A.P. Moller-Maersk <MAERSKb.CO> plans to expand its transport and logistics business to compete directly with package delivery companies UPS <UPS.N> and Fedex <FDX.N> as part of a major restructuring, its chief executive said Tuesday.

Maersk, the world's largest container shipping company, has sold off the majority of its energy assets to focus entirely on transport and logistics.

"We're building this company that is a global integrated container business, a company very similar to UPS and Fedex," CEO Soren Skou told investors at a capital markets day in Copenhagen on Tuesday.

"I hope they will be considered peers of ours, when we are done with this journey in 3-5 years," he added.

As part of the restructuring, Maersk aims to expand its services to all parts of the supply chain, giving customers the ability to deal with one firm when shipping goods from one end of the world to another.

Soren Skou, the CEO of Maersk Line, speaks during an interview with Reuters at a hotel in London March 5, 2012. REUTERS/Luke MacGregor

In a digitization drive, Maersk has teamed up with IBM to create an industry-wide blockchain-based trading platform it says will allow it to offer more value-added services in areas like freight forwarding and trade finance.

In the biggest deal in breaking up the Maersk conglomerate, French oil major Total <TOTF.PA> purchased the company's North Sea-focused oil and gas business in August in a $7.5 billion deal.

Shares in Maersk were trading 3.7 percent lower at 10,495 Danish crowns at 1003 GMT, below the August level when the Total sale was announced and around same level as when it announced its new strategy in September 2016.

(GRAPHIC - Maersk has lost its natural oil hedge: http://reut.rs/2BG7m6t)

(Reporting by Stine Jacobsen; Editing by Jacob Gronholt-Pedersen and Mark Potter)

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