Analysis & Insights

Introduction:

To understand the impact of global and local markets in our lives we rely on perspective and analysis as tools to help prepare and create the action plans with which to address common challenges and seize emerging opportunities.

Breaking news delivered 24/7 leaves little time for perspective or analysis. The escalating pace of reported technologies, innovations, disruptions, mergers, local, regional and global collisions can drive our everyday decision making to a short term understanding.

ACT Global Group’s Insights provides analysis from all sectors of the business community, focusing on the benefits of clarity, convergence, connections, and collaborations promoting and integrating best business models.

New low in shipping confidence

Author: Richard Greiner

Overall confidence levels in the shipping industry fell to a record low in the three months to February 2016, according to the latest Shipping Confidence Survey from international accountant and shipping adviser Moore Stephens. The average confidence level expressed by respondents in the markets in which they operate was 5.0 on a scale of 1 (low) to 10 (high). This compares to the 5.6 recorded in November 2015, and is the lowest rating in the life of the survey, which was launched in May 2008 with a confidence rating of 6.8.

To read the full article, please click the link below.

Comment by: James Walsh

The simple answer to overcapacity is to reduce the numbers. How is idling or disposing of ships unlike other industries - taking a plant off line, offshoring... Risking Opportunism particularly when there are record numbers of units waiting to fill the vacant slot - most trucking firms would recognize that risk. Increased ship recycling is another answer, although current low scrap prices may delay the decision on when to recycle. Regulation may help. Nations and ports giving preference to well run, responsible sustainable operators via lower fee structures. Set the bar, lower the risk and we may all benefit.

Liner shipping – a tragedy of the commons?

I could have called thisThe Emperor’s Got No Clothes, but I will go with Charlton Heston’s line from the 1968 film, Planet of the Apes, “You maniacs! You blew it up!” Only the bosses of the great liner shipping companies of today could have been stupid enough to respond to falling freight rates by building strings of much bigger ships.

Yes, we know that the cost per slot is less on a bigger ship. We also know that responding to an excess of something – in this case slot capacity on the major trades – by making a lot more of it is not a way to get the price back up.

So why are the grown men in charge of liner shipping – men entrusted with billions of dollars’ worth of investments and on whom thousands depend for their livelihoods – so terminally stupid?

Lessons Learned: Response to Paris Terrorist Attack

PARIS—On the morning of November 13, the Paris SAMU (a fleet of emergency medical services ranging from ambulances to doctors) conducted a full dress rehearsal of their response plan to a multi-site terrorist attack. That same day there were three explosions and four shootings in the heart of Paris.

This time, the violence was not a drill. It was the worst terrorist attack on European soil in 11 years.