COPENHAGEN, Nov 27 (Reuters) - Major ship brokerage firmMaersk Broker is looking into possible mergers and jointventures after a spate of deals in the broking industry which isgearing up for a revival in the international shipping businessafter a five-year downturn.
Earlier this month, London-based ICAP said it was intalks to combine ICAP Shipping with Howe Robinson Group and shipbroker Clarkson is seeking to buy Norwegian brokerageand investment bank RS Platou.
In July, ACM Shipping Group and Braemar Shipping Services'shipbroking arm Braemar Seascope completed a merger deal.
"We are looking into different kind of possibilities,"Maersk Broker Chief Executive Anders Hald said when asked byReuters for his reaction to the industry consolidation. He saidMaersk Broker could look at mergers or joint ventures.
"We face growing demands from customers and the trend isthat the biggest brokerage firms get bigger," Hald said. "Wewill come out with a very satisfactory result for 2014 but wemust continually position ourselves for the future."
He emphasised that privately-held Maersk Broker was not upfor sale and it would continue to buy and sell vessels and actas broker between shipowners, charterers and shipbuilders.
The shipping industry has had to try to absorb a glut of newvessels ordered between 2007 and 2009 just as the financialcrisis hit. This plunged shipping into one of its worst everdownturns. This year, a revival in global trade is helping toimprove conditions for shipping firms and has also spurred therun of deals, with ship brokers seeking greater scale to helpthem to benefit from a market recovery.
Copenhagen-based Maersk Broker is one of the world's topfive ship brokerages. It is wholly owned by the Maersk family,which is also in charge of the foundation which controls themajority of voting rights in conglomerate A.P Moller-Maersk.
For its first 75 years, Maersk Broker focused on servingcompanies in the Maersk group but the business has expanded inthe last 25 years to offer services to other companies.
(Reporting by Ole Mikkelsen. Editing by Jane Merriman)