URSABLOG: Reassuringly Expensive

Some things in life are just plain reassuring. Like getting on to one of Copenhagen’s driverless trains and knowing that you will be arriving at your destination at the time Google Maps said you would. And in fact Copenhagen is generally one of those reassuring places. Once I have remembered that cyclists have right of way, always, and that eye contact is kept to a minimum, I can happily walk – yes walk! – on pavements across the city knowing as long as I keep to my side of the street and myself to myself, I can exist in a state of happy oblivion, bouncing along in my own bubble.

What else can I say in praise of the Danish capital? You never wait longer than ten minutes for an Uber (I broke my usual self-imposed ban for the sake of convenience) and the drivers are all pleasant and polite. Streets are clean, even though the sheer choice of rubbish disposal options can be bewildering. Everyone is unerringly, relentlessly polite. Downsides? Tesla cars are everywhere – whispering along the streets of their contempt of petrol cars – and the price of, well, everything, is high. And it can get cold, even in May, even when the sun is shining.

I was in Copenhagen to attend the various functions prior to the Danish Shipbrokers’ Club Dinner. It was an opportunity to accept some kind invitations, network, and jolt myself out of the daily grind of trench warfare on a broking desk. It was a welcome jolt. I saw old friends – some of them a bit worse for wear – as well as old students and colleagues. I had the chance to spend some quality time with clients – it’s amazing how a conversation can deepen and grow in inverse proportion to the lack of desire to engage with mindless networkers – as well as meet new, potential clients by accidental design.

It is also amazing how the reputation of this blog goes before me, and I sometimes feel pressure to be erudite, funny, incisive and knowledgeable when people realise that I am the one that pushes this thing out every weekend. But because of that I think that I have more interesting conversations than just discussing the latest market news – Trump, USTR, tariffs – ad infinitum and ad nauseum. Not only do I have to be erudite, funny, sarcastic etc. but people feel that they can be the same with me, which is actually very good fun and a very welcome change. It can be even more fun when there has been drink taken. However these discussions actually make me think, and think differently, and put things into a wider context.

I am always grateful when I have colleagues with me, and this week I had my chartering colleagues in town as well, even though they were running around a lot more than I was as the events were a lot more chartering focused. Anyway they took me to a brunch event – I turned down a beer, and it was too early, way too early for wine – of clients of theirs, and introduced me to one of the management.

“Oh, so you’re the famous Simon Ward who inserts a bit of real life into shipping?” he said, as we were introduced, and thereafter – my vanity satisfied – the conversation flowed freely. After some introductory small talk he told me a very interesting story.

He was dragged – reluctantly – by his wife to a flea market or car boot sale (I prefer the French vide-grenier, literally: empty loft) where people sell secondhand stuff, either clearing out their own rubbish or trading in other people’s. His wife, he told me, loves these kind of things, where as he finds them boring and pointless. But to maintain marital harmony, he accompanied her, sniffing in disdain, trailing one or two metres behind her.

Until he got really bored and looked abstractedly at the books for sale on one stall, and found a copy of – and this is a free translation of course – A Hundred Years of the Danish Shipowners’ Association – 1886-1986. I suspect that this is long out of print.

He grabbed it quickly, and paid for it – “Don’t you even want to negotiate?” lamented the bored stallholder – and read it in more or less one sitting. He found it insightful and illuminating, he told me, because he realised that these owners – many of them still in existence, more of them no longer around – had to deal with (in his own words) “all sorts of serious shit”. Like what? I asked.

“The transition from sail to steam, and then from steam to diesel. The last ones out of sail went out of business, but the first ones into steam also struggled with the costs of being early adopters. They also had to deal with two world wars, not to mention occupation by Nazi Germany, with geopolitical issues which make our days look like benign in comparison.”

His conclusion? We all have to deal with shit, whatever age we are in, and it never stops. His decisions, and daily work, is in reality no different – trying to manage the risk of the world he finds himself in – than those shipowners of the past. He may have the benefit – and burden – of a lot more information and cheap communication to be able to act quicker, but none of us know the future, and those that think they do are headed for a fall. It is positioning ourselves in the world of perfect competition, and in the face of a necessarily unknown future that counts, not trying to mold the future to our own desires and needs. I found these insights wise and necessary.

We were interrupted in these discussions by another sale and purchase broker who felt my presence in the room – the best have an almost sixth sense that alerts them to unwelcome competition – and the conversation drew to a natural end. But his comments stayed with me, not only because they reframed many of my own thoughts, but because they are so deceptively simple. We complicate them with the quest for finding newer, better solutions at our peril. Or we are so stuck in our ways – and sure of them – that we fail to move with the times. Movement is deceptive, stasis can be fatal; adaptability is paramount.

And so on to the main event, the Danish Shipbrokers’ Club Dinner, where 1,400 people sat down to a cosy meal, entertained by a magician who seemed to think that shipping was dominated only by northern Europeans and the US. I shouted from the back of the room “What about Greeks?” but either I was not heard or – more likely – I was overlooked. It was not his fault that he hadn’t been briefed beforehand about Greece’s paramount role in the shipping industry, or the large amount of Greeks in attendance; in any case – we have little use for magicians in shipping, except for entertainment.

I didn’t stay late after the dinner, and neither did I go for drinks with my brother and sister brokers in the town afterwards. I walked – lost in reflection – to the station, and then was borne by the efficient and driverless metro system back to my hotel.

The business of shipping is reassuringly expensive: it takes a lot of capital to get into it, and it can destroy value brutally and – in some cases – fatally. The most successful are not the most intelligent or eloquent, neither have they been educated out of all recognition. Apart from money, there is no other qualification required to get in, or get out. But an understanding of how the markets work, an awareness of what is going on the world and an ability to adapt combined with a manageable risk appetite – as well as the capacity to bear those risks – are essential. The names of Torm, Norden, Maersk and Lauritzen are testimony to the longevity of Danish shipping. For the others no longer with us, well you will have to get hold of that history book to find out.

Simon Ward