November 9 - Raymond R Miles, who during his 43-year international transport career helped steer the course of container shipping as it evolved through its second generation, died on Friday November 6, 2015 after a brief illness. He was 71.
At the time of his death, he was serving as advising director at Stena AB.
Mr Miles began his career in 1972 with Ocean Transport & Trading in Liverpool. In the early 1980s he was named executive vice president of Barber Blue Sea, OTT's ro-ro shipping joint venture with Wilh Wilhelmsen of Norway and Brostroms of Sweden.
In 1985 he joined start-up Global Equipment Management (GEM) as managing director. GEM was one of the first cooperative ventures to promote the 'grey-box' concept to improve equipment utilisation through pooling.
In 1988, Mr Miles was named chief executive of Canada Maritime, a transatlantic container shipping joint venture between Canadian Pacific Ltd and Compagnie Maritime Belge (CMB). Canada Maritime was part of Canadian Pacific's shipping subsidiary, CP Ships, which at the time also included non-container shipping services. Shortly after, Canadian Pacific withdrew from non-container markets and repositioned CP Ships as a container specialist with Mr Miles as ceo.
He presided over the acquisition of CMB's minority shareholding in Canada Maritime and the expansion of CP Ships from a single-trade four-vessel niche carrier with annual sales of USD100 million to a global top-15 shipping, terminal and logistics group serving 20 trade lanes with a fleet of 84 ships and annual sales of USD3.6 billion. Along the way, CP Ships acquired some of container shipping's best-known and historic brands including: Australia-New Zealand Direct Line, Cast, Contship Containerlines, Italia Line, Ivaran, Lykes Lines and TMM Lines.
In 2001, when Canadian Pacific Limited spun off all its subsidiaries as independent publicly-traded businesses, CP Ships Ltd, with an initial enterprise value of about USD800 million, became the only pure-play container shipping company listed on the Toronto and New York Stock Exchanges. Its ticker symbol was TEU. In 2005, Mr Miles presided over the USD2.3 billion sale of CP Ships to TUI AG, parent of Hamburg-based Hapag-Lloyd AG.
While at the helm of CP Ships, Miles served as the first Chairman of the World Shipping Council, established in 2000 to interface with regulators on critical matters affecting the industry, including cooperating with the US government to establish maritime security benchmarks post-9/11. He also served as chairman of the Box Club, a container carrier CEO forum, and as non-executive director of West of England P&I Club and the UK Chamber of Shipping.
HLPFI's co-founder, Ian Matheson, who was an independent public relations consultant to CP Ships and some of its brands from 1989 until 2003 says Miles was a delight to work for and a very valuable source of advice for someone just starting in business.
Mr Miles is survived by Susan, his wife of 49 years, his daughters Claire and Alice and four grandchildren, Sam, Daniel, Madeleine and Francesca.
