Richard Hext News

Angad Banga of The Caravel Group was elected Chairman of the Hong Kong Shipowners Association at the organization’s annual meeting held on November 22, 2023.Banga succeeds Wellington Koo, of Valles Steamship, who stepped down after completing his two-year term as Chairman.Richard Hext of Swire Shipping was elected Deputy Chairman, succeeding Banga. Qian Weizhong of COSCO Shipping (Hong Kong) and Wang Yongxin of China Merchants Energy Shipping Company Limited were re-elected as the Vice Chairmen.Koo…

Anglo-Eastern Group and Univan Group have reached an agreement which culminates as the largest ever merger of independent, third-party ship management companies, now known as the Anglo-Eastern Univan Group. Already in the top three global ship management companies, Anglo-Eastern’s merger with Univan Ship Management creates the industry leader, the newly formed group said. There are significant scale advantages in ship management arising from a global foot print and better career opportunities for both seafarers and shore staff which are of benefit to a ship manager’s customers, the shipowners. Started in 1974, the Anglo-Eastern Group was a home-grown product and took off as a third-party manager soon after a young Belgian executive with a degree in Naval Architecture…

London-based e-shipbroker LevelSeas has acquired main competitor Houston-based SeaLogistics during a week that has seen swift consolidation in the shipping e-commerce sector. LevelSeas was founded by Shell, Cargill, and London shipbroker Clarksons in April 2000, to broker ships for cargoes over the Internet. It has always been seen by the shipping industry as the lead contender, closely followed by SeaLogistics. "LevelSeas will exchange equity for the primary assets of SeaLogistics," it said a statement. The deal with SeaLogistics will strengthen LevelSeas' position in the tanker markets especially, it said. LevelSeas' core business is e-broking, but the platform also offers voyage-management and risk management tools. Freight futures trading will also be offered.

As part of a Group re-organisation, V.Ships, the world's largest provider of ship management and related marine services, has appointed Richard Hext as Chief Executive Officer of the Groups' Marine Services Division. The move follows a restructuring of the Group into two operating divisions; Ship Management and Marine Services. The newly formed Marine Services Division will oversee all activities of the Group other than ship management, including commercial management, ship agency, consulting, travel, insurance, IT and various other support activities. Roberto Giorgi continues to head up the Ship Management Division, overseeing all cargo and leisure ship management activities within the group. Mr. Hext joins V.Ships from LevelSeas, where he was Chief Executive.

A new and formidable player emerged in shipping's e-broking sector this week to challenge the previously undisputed market leader LevelSeas, which is still more than a month away from launching a product. Software provider Strategic said on Tuesday it had acquired its closest competitor Dataworks. Although market sources put the price tag at a relatively low one million pounds ($1.4 million), they said that with 600 customers and numerous products already launched Strategic would provide a strong challenge to LevelSeas. "Levelseas started from scratch," said a source at Strategic. LevelSeas was founded by Shell Cargill and London shipbroker Clarksons in April 2000 to broker ships for cargoes over the Internet.

Internet shipbrokerage Levelseas is seeking to recoup payments from a sacked software developer, a move that illustrates the frustration many Internet start-ups have suffered in targeting the complex shipping industry. "The key to the issue is that they say the product works and we say it doesn't," Levelseas COO Kevin O'Connor said. "At the end of February we realized that CSC was unusable and we haven't used a single line of specification... or a single code," he added. CSC was unavailable to comment on Tuesday. Levelseas took the development of the world's first Internet ship-brokerage in-house in February and launched the finished product at the start of last month.

Internet ship-brokerage Levelseas went live this week, saying it would add functionality to allow cargo-owners and shipowners to trade with each other directly before October. "This initial release of LSX is LevelSeas' first step towards building a global, web enabled freight exchange and voyage management system," said CEO Richard Hext. Hext said that cargo owners and ship owners already did "a hell of a lot" of business directly without the use of a broker, and it was too early to know whether this would increase. "They will make the decision as to whether they'll do more direct, or do more through brokers, or whether they'll work with the smarter brokers who are on the system," he said.