Mærsk Mc-Kinney Møller
Mærsk Mc-Kinney Møller was a Danish shipping magnate who led A.P. Moller - Maersk from 1965 to 1993, moved it into container shipping in the 1970s, and oversaw the 1999 purchase of Sea-Land's international business.
What they did and why it matters
Mc-Kinney Møller turned Maersk into a container line and then the world's largest, shaping the ocean freight market that US importers buy from. Maersk containerized its services in the 1970s and in 1999 acquired the international container business of Sea-Land, the company Malcom McLean founded. Scale let Maersk order ever larger ships and build terminal and logistics businesses alongside shipping. Ocean rates, schedule reliability, and the carrier alliances that determine which ports a brand's goods call at all reflect the consolidation he drove.