With the slump in the shipping market now in its fourth year, bankers are putting to sea and seizing ships to protect the value of their loans to struggling shipowners.Lenders to the shipping trade, themselves lashed by the euro zone crisis, are recruiting management companies to take over and operate defaulting owners’ ships rather than sell them at a heavy loss or take a write-down on their loan books.

A.P. Moeller-Maersk A/S (MAERSKB), owner of the world's largest container line, declined in Copenhagen trading, snapping a two-day advance, on concerns that freight rates will fall amid slowing economic growth. Maersk's B shares dropped as much as 1.2 percent, the biggest intraday decline in a week. The stock fell 0.5 percent, or 200 kroner, to 38,400 kroner at 11:30 a.m. in the Danish capital.

With European sanctions likely to cripple shipping of Iranian oil from next month, India wants to use shipping lines of the Islamic nation to transport oil.India so far gets oil from its third largest supplier in ships owned by domestic firms. Ships and oil are being insured by European reinsurers.

At the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in Paris today (Thursday 21 June) the International Chamber of Shipping (ICS) will call on governments to resume negotiations on a new global agreement to eliminate market distorting measures from shipbuilding.

Slowly and subtly political policies sometimes change, and it is necessary to keep a very sharp antenna tuned to the vibrations that emanate from the political classes, lest one be caught unawares.

The results of a recent survey conducted by the ICC International Maritime Bureau (IMB) in conjunction with an international trade association have served to underline the challenges associated with container security and theft from containers. The recent survey of the Bureau of International Recycling (BIR) membership found that thefts occurred from consignments carried by all of the major container shipping lines, on shipments originating in many countries.

TØNSBERG, the world's largest roll-on/roll-off (RO/RO) ship*, built by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd. (MHI), has been awarded the "Ship of the Year 2011" by the Japan Society of Naval Architects and Ocean Engineers (JASNAOE). Every year JASNAOE selects what it considers to be the most technologically, artistically and socially superior ships and marine structures built that year, and the TØNSBERG was chosen for its highly evaluated transport efficiency and environmental compatibility. The award ceremony is slated to take place on July 25.

As a shipowner, you should keep a close eye on the work done by the shipyard if you choose to have your ships built in China, says Torben Janholt, CEO of J. Lauritzen.It takes a sharp focus on the shipyards' work to have ships built in China, but it pays off because of the low price, said CEO of J. Lauritzen, Torben Janholt, at the International Maritime Industries Forum's spring meeting, which took place on Wednesday afternoon at CBS.

The longest offshore LNG Pipe - ‘Skandi Arctic’ is gettin ready to weld together the largest export gas pipe on the seabed that has been ever built.The huge Nord Stream pipe, with 2 identical-sized parallel ones, runs from Vyborg in Russia through the Gulf of Finland and the Baltic Sea to Lumina in Germany.

APM Terminals, the ports arm of Danish shipping and oil group A.P. Moller-Maersk , expects to sign a more than 3 billion Danish crowns ($502.82 million) investment deal on a new container terminal in China, a company spokesman said on Wednesday.