BOW WAVE 275

Bow Wave Issue 275--Mixed Edition

news and views on trade, insurance and risk

Bow Wave homepage
Previous issue (274) / Current issue / Next issue (276)

Wavy Line	sam@wavyline.com
(c)2005 WavyLine.com	Issue No 275 28 Feb 05
Published free of charge to Readers
Editor: Sam Ignarski
Subscribe	Unsubscribe

In this issue:

1. Welcome
2. Quarterpoints
3. Situation at Umm Qasr
4. February FowarderLaw Edition
5. Sanders Research Associates
6. And Finally...

1. Welcome

Poem of the Week

Song

The chimney sweepers
Wash their faces and forget to wash the neck;
The lighthouse keepers
Let the lamps go out and leave the ships to wreck; The prosperous baker
Leaves the rolls in hundreds in the oven to burn; The undertaker
Pins a small note on the coffin saying, "Wait till I return, I've got a date with Love."

And deep-sea divers
Cut their boots off and come bubbling to the top, And engine-drivers
Bring expresses in the tunnel to a stop;
The village rector
Dashes down the side-aisle half-way through a psalm; The sanitary inspector
Runs off with the cover of the cesspool on his arm- To keep his date with Love.

W.H. Auden, from As I Walk Out One Evening: Songs, Ballads, Lullabies, Limericks, and Other Light Verse.

New Readers this week include:

Morry Edwards, managing editor of E-zine Cargo9.com Graham Charnock of Bowman Gilfillan Findlay & Tait in Cape Town David GT McAdams of PoundGates

News of Readers

CTC's Laurence Guy is going on maternity leave

Ashley Dinning has left the Port of Melbourne and has joined Port of Brisbane Corporation as General Manager Business Development.

contact him at:-

Ashley.Dinning@portbris.com.au

The Nautical Institute & Lloyd's List "Shipmaster of the Year" Award was awarded to (container ship) Captain Ken Owen who started with Alfred Holt & Co in 1951 and retired recently at the age of 70.

Also nominated for the award were Capt Herman Van Hecke of Tecto NV, Belgium, and Capt Ivica Tijardovic of Inagua Transports.

Australian maritime lawyer Bruce Virgo has joined the Brisbane office of Roberts Nehmer McKee, as Special Counsel, from January 2005. Roberts Nehmer McKee is the largest law firm based in the port city of Townsville.

contact him at:-

bvirgo@rnmck.com.au

Readers Write

Alan Coleman writes:-

Times Marine Survey and Aalmar Surveys (London),is pleased to announce that Frank Buttell has joined their team and will soon be moving up to Qatar to expand their P&I and H&M survey coverage there.

Contact him at:

alantime@emirates.net.ae

AfterOfficeHours News

In the new AfterOfficeHours on-line directory subscribers can list their details in our relational database by firm, by office, and by individual. Instead of circulating lists to many departments in many companies, subscribers can now list their members of staff who are temporarily present anywhere in the world on a job. People searching for surveyors, consultants and lawyers in a particular place will find an answer by using the advanced search engine.

New Names Listed on the Directory

Argentine Club Correspondents Pandi Liquidadores
Captain Terry Ogg's Marine Professionals
Astbury Marine Services--the can do firm
Cargo Solutions--experts on cargo and loss prevention Queensland Maritime Attornies Roberts Nehmer Mckee

Register Now. Free Trial Period. Very Reasonable Rates.

http://www.afterofficehours.com

A mixed collection of items this week

Enjoy.

2. Quarterpoints

Your editor's recent column in Lloyds List dwelt on the issue of the predomination of a a certain personality type in the marine insurance world.

Bring Back Fun

It was at a recent dinner with an old friend in an amiable Club that the realisation dawned that one of the great unmentionables of the transport and marine insurance industry is how miserable it has grown. When people are a little bit at ease, over a meal or a glass they almost always volunteer that the work they do isn't fun for them anymore. What are the reasons for this?

My friend thought it was the tendency to overcontrol which was responsible. Such were the requirements of the regulators and the owners of capital that a free, liberal style of operations was no longer thinkable. Centralisation was the inevitable result and the smack of firm adminstration. I wondered if it was to do with the fact that so much red ink was produced during the second half of the 1990s when competitors in the market chased each other into the bargain basement. But in this business whenever a fork in the road appears, or a trend becomes unstoppable or a major account leaves one organisation for another, the reason given is always price and cost, even though the reality is often a more complex package than mere bundle of money.

So maybe the grey malaise which currently invests the Clubs and the fixed market has a more complicated complexion. This is a people business whose people are not particularly happy in their work. A list of what makes them unhappy is not so hard to produce:-

They are unhappy because they work in bland impersonal surroundings with little privacy, professional backup or even storage. Not all environments are so bad but many are grey, undecorated, and almost brutal. They are not what people choose when they have the choice.

They are unhappy because the industry is conservative and is adapting with difficulty to new IT and communications. A halfway house of paper and e-mail is where most firms live, with paper files and electronic files struggling to mirror each other. In an industry where the careful hoarding of every scrap of evidence is endemic, in case of future disputes, this is not a wonderful way of managing..

They are unhappy because the industry they have invested their lives in is in contraction. As safety and system have become better and tighter, the role for specialist insurers of accidents has become a lesser one. But the world of shipping and transport as a whole has been growing with world trade.

It is certainly no fun to be in a firm which is in the throws of a merger or an acquisition. A smaller class of people called shareholders may find the process electrifyingly interesting, for the rest the uncertainty of it all brings a lot of stress. Some very competent brokers I know have had the experience of being reinterviewed for their jobs not once but several times, as the consolidation of broking took place around them.

Many organisations have made a hash of the need for a sense of continuity and succession within their ranks. Few organisations will produce anything like what they are capable of if there is a sense of being in a dead end without the prospect of advancement and a place in the sun for high achievement.

In the end an industry with long roots in the history of international trade, the product of free trade, the fruit of liberalism, a showplace of individualism is always going to be in tension with the notion of control. Too much of it and you have a recipe for unhappiness and underachievement. The sense of constraint and constriction, the manifestations of authoritarian control is strong in many offices. Too little and the wild men give away the shop to the gleeful assureds. But scanning the halls of insurance in London in 2005, the problems which arise are certainly not coming out of the free and easy nature of the industry and its leaders.

Where the deficits are is in a certain lack of humanity and warmth-insurance is often populated by rather shrewd, rather risk averse individuals with a tendency to plot their moves in cliques--not a promising mixture in a time which calls for better improvisation, more imagination, the need to reinvent an old business, and the need to reach out into a changing world which does not want to insure itself in the ways of yesterday. Too many of what the Freudians called "retentives" can be harmful for any organisation.

The sense of fun which is traditionally enjoyed by people in this walk of life arise out of a sense of unboundedness, of playing a part in the world of international commerce, of trading in a complex field, of knowing so much about a specialised subject, of being the supplier of choice to discerning buyers, of travel, mobility, dealing with all kinds of people and cultures and rapid improvisation in cases of commercial need. And of course the warm appreciation of one's peers.

None of these good things come from regulators, and nor from 'control' that holy grail of insurers, so often named as a virtue by the ambitious , so rarely claimed in times of reverse. When was the last time the owners of control admitted that a run of bad losses was their responsibility?

It is possible to reinvest this world with fun. Manage it so that there is the highest possible degree of individual freedom and liberty to think, act, plan, imagine and prosper as is consistent with a reasonable degree of control. And keep the demons of control under better management.

3. Situation at Umm Qasr

Reader Harry Karanassos of Inchcape Shipping Services has sent in this report relating to the month of February:-

Cargo movements

Presently bagged rice and wheat in bulk are the main cargoes arriving in Umm Qasr, Iraq.

Bagged cargoes are being discharged in the new port and smaller wheat vessels as well, which are being discharged by means of portable vacuvators.

Large grain vessels (up to 45000 tons of cargo) are being discharged at the grain silo berth, where a turnaround of up to 5000 tons/24 hours is achieved.

Bagged cargo is being discharged at 1250-1500 tons/24 hours on a 4 hold vessel.

The port in principal works 24 hours per day, 7 days per week, however, discharging rates do slow down during the night-time hours.

There is a regular container traffic in to Umm Qasr’s new port by several feeder operators like Farmus Line, CMA/CGM and Middle East Shipping.

There is regular ro/ro traffic in to Umm Qasr’s new port, by Naif Marine, with their own vessels, Jebel Ali 2, 3 and 4.

Merdif lines are also active in the port with Merdif 1 and 2. Both lines carry passenger and general cargoes, mainly electronics and consumer goods. These vessels are being discharged by the 2 generator-operated gantry cranes, ZPMC’s. average production however is very low i.e. 8-10 moves/hour.

Recently 2 Liebherr LHM 400 mobile cranes were delivered to Umm Qasr’s new port and both are operational. Maximum SWL is 100 tons each and they are fitted with twin 20ft automatic spreaders. Local crane-drivers have been trained by a Liebherr instructor.

Liability insurance is still not available in Iraq, due to the present security situation.

Cargo movements do require armed escorts; however Iraqi trucking companies arrange their own security by having armed co-drivers in their trucks.

Cargo is not yet moving by rail, although Umm Qasr has a good rail connection to the hinterland, this is, again, because of the present security situation. Port security is improving; however cargo related security is still not in place as pilferage is rife once goods are stored in the numerous warehouses in the port. This is the main reason why all cargo is being discharged on direct delivery basis, thus avoiding storage in the port.

Contact him at:-

Harry.Karanassos@iss-shipping.com

4. February FowarderLaw Edition

The latest edition has appeared of Peter Jones's e-zine designed for people who take an interest in the recondite liabilities of freight forwarders and NVOCs--this is a group of operators who used to be referred to as the "architects of transport" but who now increasingly are called "supply chain managers". During the soft insurance market of the mid to late 1990s it was a sector that gave insurance underwriters a damn good burning. With talk of rates on the turn the hope must be that the parties will trade more sensibly this time around.

Peter, who is one of the pioneers of the internet in this field, has a lot of changes planned for his site in the coming months. To read the current issues discussed go to:-

http://www.forwarderlaw.com/

5. Sanders Research Associates

Some of the most stimulating items which arrive in your editor's in box come from this source which is not your average kind of asset management advice insofar as it takes a very sceptical not to say independent view of financial and current events without ever stooping to mere abuse or vilification. What your editor especially esteems is the undiminished vigour and zest with which Sanders trades in the marketplace of ideas. Much of the output of SRA is available only to subscribers, but insurance executives hungry for more intellectual sustenance than is provided by their beigeier investment advisors these days can get a flavour from the public website. Go to:

http://www.sandersresearch.com

6. And Finally...

For these redefinitions many thanks to Frazer Hunt:-

* Avoidable: What a bullfighter tries to do.
* Bernadette: The act of torching your mortgage.
* Burglarise: What a crook sees with.
* Control: A short, ugly inmate.
* Counterfeiters: Workers who put together kitchen cabinets. * Eclipse: What an English barber does for a living. * Eyedropper: A clumsy ophthalmologist.
* Heroes: What a guy in a canoe does.
* Left Bank: What a robber did when his bag was full of loot. * Misty: How golfers create divots.
* Parasites: What you see from the top of the Eiffel Tower. * Pharmacists: A helper on the farm.
* Primate: Removing your spouse from in front of the TV. * Relief: What trees do each spring.
* Rubberneck: What you can do to relax your wife. * Seamstress: Describes 250 pounds in a size 6.
* Selfish: What the owner of a seafood store does. * Subdued: A guy that works on submarines.
* Sudafed: Bring litigation against a government official

BOW WAVE is published each week to over 11 650 Readers in the transport,insurance,shipping and finance industries.

Thanks for reading BOW WAVE