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Aponte family
aponte lines up successors to take charge
Diego gradually assuming more top-level container
duties while Alexa concentrates on the cruise business
BY the time Alexa and Diego Aponte were born, their parents
had already started to build a shipping empire that would
eventually evolve into one of the biggest and most powerful
in the world. There was little question as to what they would
do when they grew up.
Geneva-headquartered Mediterranean Shipping Co is very
much a family business, with Italian-born Gianluigi Aponte
the powerful patriarch still firmly in charge. Although he is
in his early seventies, he has made it crystal clear that he
has no intention of retiring or easing up. Senior container
line executives report directly to him under MSC’s famously
flat management structure.
But there is also no doubt that his son Diego, now 37, is
being groomed to take over the container shipping business
that ranks second only to Maersk Line, while 40-year-old
Alexa concentrates on the cruise line along with her Israeli
mother, and her husband Pierfrancesco Vago who is chief
executive of MSC Crociere.
With his father retaining a tight grip on the container line,
Diego Aponte is responsible for the group’s ports business,
Terminal Investment, the world’s sixth-largest container
terminal operator.
Like their father, Diego and Alexa keep a relatively low
profile. None of the family have biographical details on
MSC’s website. But when MSC formed a vessel-sharing
alliance with CMA CGM late last year, it was Diego Aponte
and his opposite number at CMA CGM, Rodolphe Saadé, who
announced the deal and fielded media questions, rather than
their respective fathers. Both made the point that they were
Family line up:
Gianluigi
Aponte, left, with
his daughter
Alexa and his
son Diego
32 next generation 2012
responsible for negotiating the agreement. That was seen
by some as a signal that the younger Aponte was gradually
taking on more top-level duties.
He had already stepped into the gap left by the untimely
death in early 2010 of Nicola Mastro, one of Mr Aponte Senior’s
inner circle who had helped MSC grow into the dominating
force it is today and had also set up MSC’s terminals division.
Gianluigi Aponte is convinced that family businesses are
by far the best model for shipping.
“I don’t think shipping companies that are quoted on the
stock exchange will ever be successful,” he said recently.
“Shipping needs a lot of dedication, a lot of sacrifice, a lot of
knowledge that you only have if you work every day... and are
responsible 100% for the business.”
It is that commitment and determination that he expects
of his children as they prepare to take on the business that
their father founded with a 2,800 dwt tweendecker in the
early 1970s, and which now includes a fleet of more than 470
containerships of 2.2m teu, cruise vessels, ferries and ports.
Those who know the company and Mr Aponte snr regard
him as one of the sharpest brains in the business, but
someone who is also immensely loyal to his staff and, as
a former sea captain, hugely supportive of his shipboard
personnel.
His children will have to demonstrate that they have the
same depth of industry knowledge while able to command
as much respect as their father who has achieved so much
over the past four decades. Industry insiders say he will be
an incredibly hard act to follow.