Shipping execs being investigated

Three former and incumbent senior executive directors from companies owned by China Shipping (Group) Company, one of the country's leading shipping and logistics group, have been placed under investigation by government authorities, a media report said Wednesday.

This is the latest anti-corruption move made by the government in the shipping sector, which is suffering serious losses.

Mao Shijia, former general manager of China Shipping Tanker Company Ltd, Liu Houping, deputy general manager of production and operation department at China Shipping Tanker Company Ltd, and Jia Hongxiang, former vice chairman of China Shipping Container Lines Co, were under investigation, insiders were quoted by the China Business News as saying on Wednesday.

"It is hard to make judgments about whether the investigations of the three senior executives will have a negative impact on China Shipping," an insider who wanted to stay anonymous told the Global Times Wednesday.

But the insider said that "it is difficult for the listed companies of China Shipping to turn profits from losses this year, partly because of the sluggish international trade conditions."

Efforts by the Global Times to contact China Shipping several times Wednesday were not successful by press time.

The investigation of China Shipping (Group) Company's senior executive directors come as China's central government has been focusing heavily on fighting corruption.

The Third Plenary Session of the 18th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) approved a decision on comprehensive and deep reform of the anti-corruption system earlier this month.

Wang Qishan, secretary of the CPC Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, also reiterated this reform during his tour of Central China's Hubei Province Friday.

The investigation followed another anti-corruption move against executives from China Cosco Holdings Co, a listed company that is owned by the country's largest shipping and logistics group.

Xu Minjie, executive director at China Cosco Holdings, was under investigation by related departments and had resigned for "personal reasons," the company said in a statement on November 9.

Top executives of State-owned companies in other sectors were also caught in anti-corruption investigations recently. Several senior officials from China National Petroleum Corporation, including Jiang Jiemin, former head of the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission and the former chairman of the company, were also under investigation for alleged corruption.

Two of the listed companies owned by China Shipping both reported losses in the third quarter this year, with China Shipping Container Lines Co reporting a net loss of 1.67 billion yuan ($274 million) and China Shipping Development Co Ltd seeing a net loss of 1.19 billion yuan in the first three quarters.

China Shipping Development ascribed its poor business performance to the sluggish global shipping environment in its quarterly report.

The share prices of China Shipping Development declined by 0.47 percent Wednesday, compared with a 0.82 percent rise of the benchmark Shanghai composite index.

The cargo throughput at China's ports reached 900 million tons in October, rising by 4.5 percent year-on-year, 4.2 percent points fewer compared with the same period of the previous year, according to data released by the Ministry of Transport Wednesday.

But an industry watcher still had an optimistic attitude about the outlook of the shipping industry despite the current poor business performance and corruption scandals reported by the media.

"The shipping and shipbuilding industry has already seen a slight rebound at the end of this year compared with the same period of last year," Qian Xinnan, deputy director of the China Association of the National Shipbuilding Industry, told the Global Times Wednesday.