Page 11: of Maritime Logistics Professional Magazine (Sep/Oct 2017)

10 12

Maintaining Separate Identities and Sharing of and shall have fully separate and independent sales, pricing

Competitive Information in U.S. and marketing functions.” The language further read, “No in-

Since the advent of the proposed, but never implemented, P3 formation which is commercially sensitive may be exchanged

Alliance in 2013, the sharing of commercially sensitive infor- directly or indirectly between any of the Parties …” mation between parties to a vessel sharing agreement (VSA There was also an additional problem, in particular, that or Alliance) has been a hot topic. The proposed P3 Network I as a Commissioner was concerned with – namely, joint

Vessel Sharing Alliance (P3 Alliance) would have consisted of contracting authority by the Parties. Basically, the P3 Parties

Maersk, CMA CGM and Mediterranean Shipping Company originally proposed authority to use their collective network (MSC); the world’s three largest ocean carrier companies by volume of containers carried. The Federal Maritime Commis- sion (FMC) was concerned, in part, with the ocean carriers sharing competitively sensitive information such as pricing data and then use their collective market power to drive-up the transportation rates.

While the three largest carriers would be collaborating op- erationally, their Agreement fled with the FMC contained assurances that the carriers would continue to compete with each other on pricing and cost – meaning shippers would con- tinue to be able to negotiate with each carrier individually.

In fact, in the P3 vessel sharing agreement itself, proposed language stated, “Each party shall retain its separate identity www.maritimelogisticsprofessional.com 11I