1. Shipping and the Law in Naples
2. Cyber Security for Ships
3. Self Driving Cars
4. A Forwarder thinks about 2016
5. Mario de Pace
6. People and Places
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1. Shipping and the Law in Naples
Here is something we do not see very often. Francesco S Lauro of Studio
Legale Lauro writes:-
The 6th edition of Shipping and the Law Conference which took place
in the beautiful venue of Pio Monte della Misericordia in Naples has
been a huge success!
If you wish to have a look at our gallery, the press review and all
the videos, they are now online, and if you you weren’t with us
last October now you can watch the entire conference!
We are already preparing for the 7th edition of Shipping and the Law
which will take place later this year in October and we do hope to welcome
you on board!
Please do not hesitate to contact us if you are interested to participate
as a delegate or as a sponsor.
[The extensive list of Speakers includes our Sponsor Clark Zhou who
gives a briefing on arrest in China]
Go to:-
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrvC8Wo4cVgNrFfMfr7E3xzAYET0wLXD_
2. Cyber Security for Ships
We are in receipt of the recent guidelines issued by BIMCO, designed
to to help the global shipping industry prevent major safety, environmental
and commercial issues that could result from a cyber incident onboard
a ship.This subject has got under the collar of insurers and operators
alike. There is a dawning realisation that a slip between cyber lip
and cup will happen in the foreseeable future.
The cyber guidelines are a first for the shipping industry, developed
by international shipping associations, comprising BIMCO, CLIA, ICS,
INTERCARGO and INTERTANKO – and with support from a wide range of stakeholders.
The Guidelines on Cyber Security Onboard Ships are free to download
from the BIMCO website.
Angus Frew, Secretary General of BIMCO, says the aim was to to identify
potential cyber vulnerabilities for ships – and their implications
– based on the latest expert research.”
“The aim is to provide the shipping industry with clear and comprehensive
information on cyber security risks to ships enabling shipowners to
take measures to protect against attacks and to deal with the eventuality
of cyber incidents.”
Cyber threats are changing all the time – and BIMCO and the other
industry associations will regularly update the cyber guidelines to
ensure shipping companies have the latest information available.
Download the Cyber Security Guidelines online for free here:-
https://www.bimco.org/News/2016/01/04_Cyber_security_guidelines.aspx
3. Self Driving Cars
Since childhood your editor has always thought of California as the
capital of the future, mostly for better but sometimes for the worse.
We thought our Readers might take an interest in how the California
Republic is dealing with the issue which was featured in the Insurance
Journal:-
Hilary Rowen, a partner with Sedgwick LLP, has become an expert on
the legal issues surrounding autonomous vehicles. She spoke to Insurance
Journal to help answer questions like: What are the key provisions of
the new California DMV regulations on self-driving cars? Are self-driving
cars likely to change car ownership patterns? Will self-driving cars
shift liability from auto to product liability coverages? Will self-driving
cars reduce auto insurance premiums?
Maybe there is a Reader out there already tasked with describing the
same precautions for automata at sea?
http://www.insurancejournal.tv/videos/13125/
4. A Forwarder thinks about 2016
Ian Matheson has sent in the seasonal thoughts of the head of Britain’s
freight forwarding association:-
The British International Freight Association (BIFA), the trade association
for UK freight forwarders, says that 2016 will see its members continuing
to face numerous challenges, with some the result of legislative changes
and government policy, rather than economic issues.
Director General Robert Keen says: “From a legislative perspective,
two major impacts on the freight forwarding landscape in 2016 will result
from the implementation of the Union Customs Code and the amendment
to SOLAS requiring the verification of gross mass of containers prior
to loading.
“There is still significant confusion about the implications of
both legislative changes and BIFA will continue to hold events to brief
members and others to help them manage the change in processes.”
2015 was dominated by dreadful events at the Channel Tunnel, which
had a significant impact on freight forwarders that use the crossing
for their European overland haulage operations.
With the situation looking likely to continue into 2016, Keen adds:
“BIFA has repeatedly called for government action to address the
problems being caused by the would-be illegal immigrants attempting
to stowaway on trucks.
“We will continue to press the authorities in France and the UK
to step up their protection of the routes across the Channel and fulfill
their obligations to let trade move unhindered on this strategic freight
route.
"In 2015, BIFA said that it felt that there is some evidence that
the UK Government is listening to the advice it is getting from the
UK’s logistics sector and we welcomed the freeze in fuel duty and
planned investment in the UK’s road infrastructure, as being positive
signs.
“However, this month we expressed our dismay at the ongoing delay
in a decision on the expansion of airport capacity in the south east
and sincerely hope that the government will not let party political
issues continue to stop progress on this crucial issue, in 2016."
Another important issue for BIFA members next year will be education
and training.
Keen concluded: “BIFA will continue our work to make more comprehensive
educational material available to BIFA Members online. We have wrestled
with this topic for the past few years and have an emerging strategy,
which will become
5. Mario de Pace
Mark Holford has sent in a piece on the influential former IT partner
of Thomas Miller who died after Christmas at the age of 72 in St Agnes,
Cornwall:-
Mario de Pace was born and grew up in South Africa, coming to the UK
as a young man. He joined Thomas Miller in 1975 in their Cockfosters
office and throughout his 25 year career was Head of IT. As the importance
of IT grew, so did his role and eventually to such an extent he became
a partner in 1988.
I knew nothing of Mario when I was appointed by the then Thomas Miller
Senior Partner, David Martin-Clark, to work with him in 1990 on an IT
strategy. In fact most of the things I had heard were negative. How
wrong they were. He was the best colleague to work with. Always wise
and supportive. It was a "marriage" made in heaven: we each
complemented our strengths and weaknesses. Mario was a past master at
ensuring that everyone was on side before a meeting took place, while
I was good at presentations, which he did not like doing. In fact the
first illustrated presentation ever made to the Thomas Miller Board
/ Partnership was our 1990 IT Strategy – we used 35mm slides made
from a PowerPoint type presentation package; we created it together
and I delivered it, heavily rehearsed by Mario!
Mario, Sam Ignarski and myself turned our IT Strategy into a competition
entry on a vision for the London Market. It won the first prize, which
included a pair of video conference phones – we never used them!
Mario was a visionary. We were one of the first London insurance companies
to get internal email in the very early 90’s. He then suggested
that I look at a product called Lotus Notes (eventually taken over by
IBM). It took me 6 months to grasp why it was so powerful, but he had
seen it immediately . Only now is Thomas Miller ceasing to use it.
Arising out of the IT Strategy Mario and I created some very big projects,
including “Guide”, a complex underwriting system, that had
its challenges. Yet he always was clear-sighted, encouraging and helped
me through some difficult times to a satisfactory outcome. “Oasis”,
our largest project, was designed to make Thomas Miller’s claims
paperless and to control the entire claims documentation process. This
was radical in 1995 and the size of the project was ambitious. Mario
was taken to Peterborough by IBM, our project partner, to see how the
Sun Alliance handled 2m motor claims. When he commented that we only
had 85,000, the IBM executive said”… but you have more documents
than they do!” Despite its size and complexity, the project was
a great success and won a number of awards. My colleague Kim Vernau
(now the CEO of a major Thomas Miller subsidiary, BLP Insurance,) ran
the project and remembers “how supportive Mario was during the
project, both in terms of advice and in managing the Budget!”.
Mario always had money squirrelled away and would find the funds –
sometimes large sums – to do things. We never knew how he hid them
from the Finance Director, Bruce Kesterton (now the Thomas Miller CEO).
Despite, or probably because of, this, his projects were always on or
below budget.
A young Swedish lawyer, Åke Nilson, joined Thomas Miller in the
late 80’s and left in 1992 to start a business in shipping EDI
using technology to connect businesses. Mario had the foresight to stay
in touch with Åke, who was developing a project to create paperless
electronic bills of lading. In 1996 he said to me that Åke needed
help to fund the business, christened Bolero. Between us we managed
to persuade SWIFT (the banks’ payment network) and the TT Club
(Thomas Miller’s second biggest mutual) to invest $5m each. Bolero
still exists today.
The last thing we did together was Transactio. In 2000, the middle of
the dotcom bubble, Mario and I, along with two other Thomas Miller executives
, decided that we should try to use Thomas Miller’s connections
to create Transactio, a shipping portal dotcom. As always Mario was
a core part of the vision. The deal was that if we got funded the four
of us would leave Thomas Miller. We drew up a pragmatic and modest plan
and set out to raise money but we could not find funding. I always said
that we failed was because we were not prepared to lie and say we would
get £50m of shipping advertising – everybody else did. Had we
got funded, there is no doubt that we would have been the oldest “dotcommers”;
all the rest even in shipping were in their 20’s. It is interesting
there were over 200 shipping dotcoms by the end of 2000 and only about
5 survive today. Following our failure to find funding, Thomas Miller
decided to invest in one of these survivors, ShipServ, a shipping ecommerce
business.
At this point Mario took the wise decision to hang up his IT / Thomas
Miller boots and retire to Cornwall. Despite illness, he took up another
challenge, driving the renovation and conversion of the St Agnes Miners’
& Mechanics Institute into a successful community centre. In this
as in all his projects he showed great drive and determination, despite
failing health.
Finally the other thing I remember was his vicious one fingered typing;
he would destroy a keyboard a year. He wrote 7 IT help books this way.
I am pleased to see that they are still available on Amazon. Like many
of his achievements he was very quiet and modest about his writing career.
Thomas Miller owes him an enormous debt of gratitude; all the systems
we put in place in the 90’s are still there and only just now being
replaced. It is a testimony to their quality and inspiration that they
have been difficult to supplant. To me he was a wonderful colleague
and friend. Our careers were inextricably linked for 10 years and I
owe him a huge amount. All my retirement activities are involved with
IT and without Mario I would not be doing any of them. I know that you
will be watching over us and ensuring that we apply your wisdom. R.I.P.
[Your editor is also highly indebted to MdP for his wise guidance over
many years, not to mention his friendship]
[nb Mark Holford is the Chairman of Klipboard.io]
6. People and Places
Fichte & Co has appointed Walid Batisha as Partner in the firm’s
office. Walid, who has been heading Fichte’s litigation department since
he joined the firm in September 2012, has successfully led his team
to obtain several local landmark judgments for clients of the firm.
Licensed to practice since 2002, Walid is specialized on litigation
in the commercial, civil and shipping areas specifically before UAE
courts.
———-
Sian Fisher has been appointed as chief executive officer (CEO) of
the Chartered Insurance Institute (CII). Fisher succeeds Dr Sandy Scott,
who announced his retirement in March last year. She will take up her
new post on the 1 February.
———-
Beijing has officially approved the establishment of China Cosco Shipping
Group, the new entity created by the merger of China’s two largest
shipping conglomerates China Ocean Shipping (Group) and China Shipping
(Group).
The central government has also appointed CSG chairman Xu Lirong to
the top seat of the new company, while his chairmanship in CSG was accordingly
removed, the pair both announced on their official websites on Monday.
Mr Xu previously served in Cosco for 36 years, ultimately as deputy
president of Cosco Group, before switching employer in 2011.
———-
In the UK’s new year honours list the Nautical Institute’s Chief
Executive, Mr Philip Wake was awarded an OBE for his services to the
maritime industry.
From the Avo Archive
The website of this newsletter contains all the editorial material
since the inception of the Maritime Advocate as a print based quarterly
in 1997 under the founding aegis of John Guy, Chris Hewer and Manfred
Arnold. Readers can go to the site and search the database on the home
page in its entirety. If you are looking for an old case, an old controversy
or you would just like to see how many times you and your firm have
featured in our annals feel free to access the archive. It is like this
e-zine, free to Readers and we always appreciate the support of advertisers
and sponsors.
Looking for references to California and road liabilities, we ran across
this item in Issue 560 of March 21st, 2013:-
Arrivederci Shipowner’s Chassis Liability in the USA?
News reaches us that an American maritime peculiarity is facing its
demise on the west coast. The provision of container chasses to customers
by shipowners led to a highly specialised class of marine exposure known
to underwriters as shipowners’ over the road liability. We read this
story in the HKSG’s rather good daily zine:-
Ports of LA and LB create working group on common pool for chassis
THE ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach are to consider the creation
of a common "grey" pool of chassis to minimise unnecessary
trucking of containers to and from the ports, which involves 30,000
daily gate moves.
Since last year, ocean carriers have been exiting the chassis business
due to high cost in maintenance and little gain. Maersk was the first
to sell its 60,000 chassis in 129 locations, and more recently "K"
Line has sold up.
In the past carriers have offered a free service to truckers hauling
to and from port but this has proven to be financially unsustainable
in the current climate, said LA’s TraPac terminal vice president Scott
Axelson.
"In an age where you can barely get a complimentary sandwich on
an airline, I don’t think the steamship lines have the ability to give
a complimentary chassis, which is essentially the cost of a compact
car – and is subject to maintenance, administrative and compliance costs,
not to mention legal liability," he added.
The problem lies in the business model which is now largely made up
of lessors of chassis and other providers which include port authorities,
terminal operators, shippers, truckers, railways and labour. The chassis
pools operate separately from port users and often carry branding of
the shipping line or in recent times, the lessor.
The process of moving the chassis which number 11,000 to and fro from
13 terminals often involves hundreds, even thousands, of wasted moves
to effect repositioning within the port area.
A working group will look into the idea of a common pool. It will seek
proposals from equipment management companies by end of June. Ninety
days later it will respond to these requests.
http://www.avoarchive.com/searchBI.php
E Cards
We received many seasonal e-cards this year ex Blandy Arizona. Many
were unworthy of the slightest attention and possibly not worth the
effort that went into them. [grin] New York attorney Mike Ryan sent
one in which in its way was quite arresting. We are like many in this
post industrial age in preferring the hand made over the click and pointed.
Here it is:-
https://www.scribd.com/doc/295230838/Happy-Holidays
Social Networking
Always Online
Randy Cassingham, owner and presiding spirit at JumboJoke.com writes:-
It’s amazing how obsessed everyone’s become with their phones, playing
with their phones all the time — at restaurants, movies, gym (so I’ve
heard), while driving, eating, walking, talking.
The other day I was at a funeral when the person next to me asked me,
"Rabbi, what’s the wifi password at the cemetery?"
The Rabbi told him, "Have some respect for the dead!"
"Thank you Rabbi," the person replied.
After a pause, he asked, "Is that all lower case?"
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