P3 gets U.S. regulators approval !!

[Vincent Milner]

They are ready to Dominate, the P3 alliance is most likely to start by the mid of this year as per Maersk

[chrisg46]

Interesting, particularly as the US authorities were the noisiest initially . . but there never has been much doubt that they would get the go-ahead from the US, despite the fact that a lot of US shippers have protested.

Reuters quoted Joaquin Almunia, the European Competition Commissioner as saying that the EU was still assessing the proposed alliance because it would exceed the 30 percent market share allowed for shipping consortia. He could not give an indication of when a decision would be made.

There's also no comment yet from the Chinese . . . but no-one seems to see them as being potential objecttors.

[Neil D]

Regardless of what the regulators decide, the fact is that Maersk, MSC and CMA-CGM have to get approval for the P3 - there's no way of filling their very large ships without operational co-operation. The pressure is on for the other alliances to expand to match the P3, both in terms of numbers of lines being members, and in terms of geographical scope. Evergreen is joining the CKYH on the Asia-Europe route, the G6 is seeking permission to expand to cover the Transatlantic and Transpacific. What will China Shipping and UASC do I wonder?

[Alan Green]

Repeat of a post on 24.02.14 in a separate thread:

Hot off the press, courtesy of ShippingWatch:

If United Arab Shipping Company is to join an alliance, the decision depends entirely on how big the benefits are to the Dubai-based container carrier, UASC CEO J