 | |
| Company type | Public company |
|---|---|
| Industry | Transport |
| Founded | 22 August 1837; 188 years ago (1837-08-22) |
| Founder | Arthur Anderson  |
| Defunct | 7 March 2006 (2006-03-07) |
| Fate | Acquired byDP World |
| Headquarters | London, England |
Key people | Sir John Parker (Chairman) |
| Products | Ferries, port services, logistics services, real estate: |
| Revenue |  £2.40 billion (2004) |
Number of employees | 22,038 (2004) |
Footnotes / references | |
P&O (in full, The Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company[1]) was a Britishshipping andlogistics company dating from the early 19th century. Formerly apublic company, it was sold toDP World in March 2006 for £3.9 billion. DP World currently operates several P&O branded businesses,P&O Ferries,Istithmar P&O Estates, andP&O Maritime Logistics. It also operates P&O Heritage, which is the official historic archive and collection of P&O.
P&O Cruises was sold in 2000, and is now owned and operated byCarnival Corporation & plc, although the trademark for "P&O Cruises" is still held by the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company and used under licence.[2] The former shipping business,P&O Nedlloyd, was bought by and is now part ofMaersk Line.
In 1822,Brodie McGhie Willcox, a Londonship broker, andArthur Anderson, a sailor from theShetland Isles, went into partnership to operate a shipping line, primarily operating routes between England, Spain and Portugal. In 1835,Dublin shipowner Captain Richard Bourne joined the business, and the three men chartered theWilliam Fawcett and started a regularsteamer service between London and Spain and Portugal – theIberian Peninsula – using the namePeninsular Steam Navigation Company, with services toVigo,Oporto,Lisbon andCádiz. As the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company was incorporated in 1840 by aroyal charter its name therefore included neither "plc" nor "Limited".
The company flag colours are directly connected with the Peninsular flags: the white and blue represent thePortuguese flag in 1837, and the yellow and red theSpanish flag. At the height of theCarlist Wars the British lent their support to the legitimate heirs of Spain and Portugal and all three P&O founders played their part, from gun running to chartering steamers. As a consequence of this association and involvement P&O officers are some of the fewMerchant Navy officers entitled to wear swords, alongside the likes ofTrinity House.
In 1837, the business won a contract from theBritish Admiralty to deliver mail to the Iberian Peninsula and in 1840 they acquired a contract to deliver mail toAlexandria in Egypt.Brindisi, Italy was added to the route in the 1870s.
P&O first introduced passenger services in 1844, with a leisure cruise departing fromSouthampton to theMediterranean.[3] These voyages were the first of their kind and the forerunner of moderncruise holidays.[3] The company later introduced round trips to destinations such asAlexandria andConstantinople and underwent rapid expansion in the later half of the 19th century, with its ships becoming larger and more luxurious.[4]
In 1847, shortly after theOpium War, P&O entered theopium trade; shipping 642,000 chests ofBengal andMalwa opium in the next eleven years. They faced stiff competition from the incumbent shippers,Jardines and theApcar Line.[5]
Mail contracts were the basis of P&O's prosperity until theSecond World War, but the company also continued to become a major commercial shipping line andpassenger liner operator. In 1914, it took over theBritish India Steam Navigation Company, which was then the largest British shipping line, owning 131 steamers. In 1918, it gained a controlling interest in theOrient Line, its partner in the England-Australia mail route. Further acquisitions followed and the fleet reached a peak of almost 500 ships in the mid-1920s. In 1920, the company also established a bank,P&O Bank, that it sold toChartered Bank of India, Australia and China (nowStandard Chartered Bank) in 1927. At this time it established a commercial relationship withSpinney's of Haifa, that developed into a major regional high-end grocery store chain, which eventually provided shipping services access to much of the Middle East. Until 1934 it operated liners fromKey West, Florida toHavana; then it operated fromMiami toCuba until 1960.
In 1932, P&O expanded their passenger operations toAustralia, with the introduction ofStrathaird, which departed on a cruise toBrisbane andNorfolk Island.[3]
Eighty-five of the company's ships were sunk in theFirst World War and 179 in the Second World War.
After 1945, the passenger market declined to India, but boomed to Australia with the advent of paid-passages for literate and healthy European immigrants known asTen Pound Poms.[6] P&O built 15 large passenger liners, includingHimalaya,Chusan,Arcadia, andIberia, culminating inOriana andCanberra, which were an unprecedented speed and size.[7] By 1968, over 1 million immigrants had arrived—many via P&O—and Australia ended the programme. P&O entered thecruise market and began to sell and scrap many of these liners. It concentrated mainly oncargo ships. It entered the tanker trade in 1959 and theroll-on roll-off (RORO)ferry business in the mid-1960s.
P&O and Orient Line were formally merged in 1960 to form P&O-Orient Lines. In 1964,Orcades andOronsay were transferred to the P&O fleet. The name Orient Line was dropped altogether in 1966 whenOrsova andOriana were also transferred to the P&O fleet.
In 1969,British and Commonwealth Shipping,Furness Withy, P&O andThe Ocean Steamship Company establishedOverseas Containers Limited (OCL) to exploitcontainerisation.[8] By the early 1980s, it had converted all of its drycargo liner routes to container operations and in 1986 it bought out the remaining OCL partners, renaming the operation P&O Containers Limited (P&OCL). P&OCL was merged with Nedlloyd in 1996 to formP&O Nedlloyd.
With the development of low-cost air travel and the rising operating costs of ocean liners in the 1970s, P&O refocused its passenger operations on cruise ships.[9] This culminated in the foundation of thesubsidiary companyP&O Cruises in 1977, under which P&O carried out its subsequent passenger operations.[9]
In 1972, P&O formally absorbed theBritish-India Steam Navigation Company (BI). The amalgamation of these two companies began in 1914 but BI had retained its own identity until this time.Strick Line and Hain-Nourse, amongst several other lines were also taken over in the early 1970s. BI cargo ships were renamed Strath*M* (Strathmore,Strathmuir,Strathmay, etc.) or Strath*C* (Strathcarron,Strathcarrol), the Strick line ships renamed Strath*A* (Strathanna,Strathaird,Strathattrick (the big "A") etc.) and the Hain-Nourse ships Strath*T* (Strathtruim,Strathtay etc.). The newest ships were 6 Strath*D*s (Strathdoon,Strathduns etc.),SD14s built in Sunderland. P&O also built 6 ships in Stocznia Gdansk, Poland (the Strath*E*s) and 2 ships in Japan (the Strath*F*s) and bought into DOT, a naval shipping company.
In 1975, P&O establishedPandoro for operation of the company'sIrish Sea RO-RO routes. Pandoro was an acronym forP and O Ro. In 1998P&O European Ferries (Irish Sea) Ltd was formed by the internal merger of Pandoro Ltd. and P&O European (Felixstowe) Ltd., to run the Irish Sea routes.
In 1987, P&O took over theEuropean Ferries Group Plc—to which it had previously sold its cross channel ferry services in 1985—which traded asTownsend Thoresen, and renamed the companyP&O European Ferries.
Over the last quarter of the Twentieth Century P&O diversified into construction management (through theBovis companies, which it owned from 1974 to 1999), property investment and development, and a variety of service businesses including exhibition and conference centres, but most of these activities were disposed of following the company's decision in March 1999 to concentrate on maritime and transport. Its P&O Ports and P&O Cold Logistics divisions developed from P&O's operations in Australia, where it has a leading position in these fields.
Fastcraft is the name given to the service implemented after the split-up of P&O European Ferries in 1998. The first ship was calledSuperstar Express (entered service in 1998)[10] and sailed alongsidePride of Cherbourg andPride of Hampshire between Portsmouth and Cherbourg.
On 6 March 1987, the roll on/roll off ferry,Herald of Free Enterprise,capsized off the coast ofZeebrugge with 80 crew and 459 passengers aboard. 193 were killed in the capsizing. The operator of the ship,Townsend Thoresen, had been purchased by P&O in 1986.
The incident resulted in a coroner's inquest and a public inquiry. A jury at the coroner's inquest found aprima facie case that the company was guilty ofmanslaughter, and theCrown Prosecution Service charged the company and seven employees (seecorporate manslaughter). The charges did not result in any convictions. As part of the public inquiry, Lord Justice Sheen wrote in a July 1987 report that Townsend Thoresen (the company) possessed a "disease of sloppiness" which permeated the company's hierarchy.[11][12]
The cases surrounding the incident set aprecedent for the prosecution of corporations in cases of manslaughter andcriminal negligence inEnglish law.
On 23 October 2000 P&O divested its cruise business to formP&O Princess Cruises.[13] In April 2003 P&O Princess came together with the Carnival Corporation to formCarnival Corporation & plc. In June 2004, P&O sold its 25% stake in RoyalP&O Nedlloyd, a major container shipping business into which its container operations had been merged in 1996. Some records state that original staff members partially diverged to form Paeteco Imports and Exports in 2005, a small, privately held international subsidiary of Jcorp.[14] The container company was later (June 2005) purchased byA.P. Moller-Maersk Group.
On Sunday 30 October 2005 TheSunday Times reported that P&O was in takeover talks with Thunder FZE, a wholly owned subsidiary ofDubai Ports World, a company owned by the government ofDubai in theUnited Arab Emirates. On 29 November, the P&O board announced that it would be recommending an offer of 443 pence per share, worth £3.3 billion (US$5.7 billion) to its shareholders.[15] In early December P&O regained its status as a FTSE 100 company whenBPB plc was taken over. A bidding war commenced when Singapore'sPSA International made a £3.5 billion offer, which Dubai Ports World then topped with a bid of £3.9bn (US$7bn).[16] Despite speculation that it would make a higher bid, PSA withdrew, and in February 2006 shareholders voted in favour of the offer from Dubai.[17] The combined group is the world's third largest ports operator.
When the merger was approved by the US government in February 2006, the Bush Administration came under fire from critics who questioned the decision to allow an Arab-owned company to oversee US ports.
The move placed the leasehold interests of P&O inNew York City,Newark,Baltimore,Miami,New Orleans, andPhiladelphia under the control of Dubai Ports World. US operations represent ten percent of P&O's worldwide operations, and consist primarily of cranes and terminals. Many US politicians and media commentators assumed implicitly that the merger would affectport security at ports that P&O either managed or handled the loading and unloading of ships. David Osler, Industrial Shipping Editor ofLloyd's List said that US security procedures and overall port control would not be affected by the transaction.[18]
Several US states sought ways to block the move, citing security concerns as well as the possibility of losing related leases of foreign ports.[19] President Bush stated he would veto any legislation created with the intent to interfere with the change.[20]
On 9 March 2006, DP World agreed to sell its terminal operations at the American ports to an American company. On 11 December 2006 it was announced that AIG Global Investment Group, a division of insurance giantAIG, had acquired P&O Ports North America for an undisclosed sum.[21] Investing in infrastructure had become the latest "hot" item for financial firms, and P&O represented a high-profile asset. AIG GIG was an experienced infrastructure investor globally, having also recently acquired theLondon City Airport.[22]
On 16 December 2006P&O Dover (Holdings) Limited, a subsidiary of P&O and DP World sold its shares Phase 1 (22.5%) and Phase 2 (owned indirectly 22.5% shares), a port ofShenzhen,People's Republic of China, to a joint venture company ofChina Merchants Holdings (International) andModern Terminals Limited (MTL), for which MTL bore the whole cost.[23]Shenzhen was ranked 4th inlist of world's busiest container ports and Shekou Container Terminals was one of the four major terminals of Shenzhen.
P&O (aka DP World) manages twoports in the UK:
P&O operates ferries under the brandP&O Ferries with operations in the following areas:
Other port operators in the UK include:
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