Change of ownership at Msc container ship king passes shares to sons

The one in favour of his sons, however, does not appear to be a step backwards for the shipowner at the moment, but only a step to the side. Gianluigi Aponte, in fact, will retain the role of executive chairman - with delegated powers - of the group which, it is stressed, will continue to 'focus on its core business: the maritime transport of goods'. Soren Toft, previously a member of Maresk's executive committee, will be CEO of the group from 2020.

The captain's story has its roots not on land but in the sea of Campania; he was born, in fact, in Sant'Agnello, on 27 June 1940, to a family that, already in the early 1900s, owned small boats that transported passengers and goods between Naples and Sorrento. He lost his father at a very young age and soon realised that he had to make his own way. He graduated from the Nautical Institute in Piano di Sorrento and began his life as a sailor. He found work in Achille Lauro's fleet in the 1960s and quickly climbed the career ladder until he became a long-distance captain. As captain, he met and married Rafaela Diamant.

In 1970 he bought his first ship and founded the Aponte shipping company, which later became the Mediterranean shipping company; in 1971 another cargo unit arrived and, from that moment on, the race never stopped. In the 1980s it converted the fleet to full container and in 1987 it began operating in the passenger field by acquiring a share, and then the majority, of Starlauro.

In the early 2000s, while cargo continued to grow, the development of cruises continued, with the acquisition also of two units from the failed Festival. This was the start of a new business that also brought Msc into the cruise sector, under the leadership not only of the same captain, always the deus ex machina of the group's business, but also of Pierfrancesco Vago, Alexa's husband.

For a long time in second place in the global ranking of container shipping companies, between 2021 and 2022, Msc will take over from Denmark's Maersk the world's leading company in that sector. Today the fleet, as mentioned, numbers almost one thousand ships. And the company has a presence in 155 countries with 675 offices; it also calls at 520 ports along 300 trade routes, transporting around 30 million TEU each year. The group's operations now include maritime transport, land transport, logistics and a growing portfolio of investments in port terminals: it manages 67 of them. And the ferry sector is included in these activities: Msc controls the Genoese Gnv (Great Fast Ships) and Snav; it has also acquired a conspicuous stake in Moby, from which, however, it has announced its exit in 2025, following an intervention by the Antitrust Authority; and it entered, some time ago, into the shareholding structure of the Messina shipowning group. In short, including the passenger sector, Mediterranean shipping company employs over 200,000 people worldwide.

The expansion of the group's scope of action, which is increasingly focused on logistics in general, has accelerated in recent years. In 2023, it acquired a majority stake (and later 100%) in AlisCargo Airlines (now Msc Air). Subsequently, it acquired 50% of Italo, in a transaction worth over €4 billion, adding to the rail cargo services already offered through Medway in Italia and Europe. Not surprisingly, in 2024, the group is buying the Wartsila site in Trieste, where it intends to produce goods trains. But the company also decided to expand into the field of publishing, taking over the Genoese daily newspaper Il Secolo XIX from Gedi, through its subsidiary Blue media.

Less than a month ago, then, the shipping market received the news that Msc has entered with a 50% share in the Korean shipping company Sinokor, which is headed by Ga-Hyun Chung, the man who, in the space of a handful of months, has bought or chartered at least forty supertankers, coming to control a fleet so large that it can influence the freight market. And, according to some financial sources, entities linked to Msc are the final buyers of at least some of the dozens of ships acquired by the Korean company in recent weeks. So the king of container ships is now also expanding into the field of large tankers.