Jacques Saadé

On 1 June 2020 the master of a container ship APL England, Mohamad Zulkhaili Bin Alias, owned by CMA CGM & ANL (Singapore) lost about 50 containers overboard caused by poor cargo loading by the ships captain Mohamad Zulkhaili Bin Alias. The Australian Marine Safety Authority ordered $22 million from the ship's insurers under the Protection of the Seas Act, which must be paid before the ship will be released from detention at the Port of Brisbane. This money covers estimated clean-up and remediation costs.

In 2018, Forbes Magazine listed Saade’s net worth at 7 billion Euros, making him the 228th richest man in the world at that time.

In 2017, Saadé appointed his son Rodolphe as CEO of CMA CGM. Later that year, Rodolphe Saadé became chairman too, with Saadé becoming founder chairman.

Today, the CMA CGM Group is the world's 3rd largest container shipping company and No.1 in France. With a fleet of 489 vessels, it serves more than 420 ports worldwide and carried around 15.6 million TEUs (twenty-foot equivalent units) - estimated - in 2016. Present on all continents and in 160 countries through its 775 offices, it employs 29,000+ people including 4,500 in France. Revenue for 2016 is US$16.0 billion.

In June 2013, and for the first time since 1962, it was the President of the French Republic, François Hollande, welcomed by Saadé, who inaugurated the CMA CGM Jules Verne, flagship of the CMA CGM fleet at the time. The French President met Jacques Saadé again in 2015 for the inauguration of the CMA CGM Bougainville in Port of Le Havre.

In 2011, he built the Group's headquarters in Marseille: the CMA CGM Tower designed by Zaha Hadid, 147m in height with 33 floors. Today the CMA CGM Group is the city's biggest employer (2,400 staff).

The CMA CGM attitude has garnered the attention of the Anglo-Saxon analysts at Lloyd's List. In its 11 July 2011 edition, the British daily, a reference in the shipping industry, highlighted the fact that "with the support of a solid family network, Jacques R. Saadé fought tooth and nail during the crisis, keeping the creditors at bay, juggling the order books and deployment of his fleet, and having the courage to reject several potential investors waiting for a partner that does not interfere in the way he runs the company".

At the height of the crisis in 2009, the shipping industry was badly affected. Jacques R. Saadé was opposed to breaking up the Group. Supported by his son Rodolphe Saadé, and daughter Tanya Saadé, he was convinced container transport sector would bounce back. In 2010, CMA CGM signed an agreement with the family-run industrial Turkish group YILDIRIM. The agreement enabled the Group to strengthen its financial structure and secure finance for its investment plans. This also later led him to invest, notably in building the Group's first three 16,000 teu vessels: the CMA CGM Marco Polo, the CMA CGM Alexander Von Humboldt, and the CMA CGM Jules Verne.

He chose to equip his fleet with new large capacity vessels fitted with the latest green technologies. These vessels, combined with various other actions, allowed the group to reduce by 50% its carbon emissions per shipped container per km on its owned fleet between 2007 and 2015, confirming an objective set in 2007.

In 2006, Saadé concluded the acquisition of DELMAS and the CMA CGM Group becomes the third largest shipping Group in the world. Three additional acquisitions were made in 2007: Chinese Company Cheng Lie Navigation Ltd, U.S. Lines, and COMANAV.

Two years later in 1998 came acquisition by CMA of the National Australian Line ANL and in the following year 1999 merger of CMA and CGM and creation of the CMA CGM Group.

In 1996 Saadé acquired CGM (Compagnie Générale Maritime) following privatization.

In 1986, after noticing that volumes from Asia were constantly on the rise, he decided to extend CMA's shipping lines to Asia (including Japan). He later traveled to China himself in 1992 to open the first regional office in Shanghai, entrusting the management of the company's development in Asia to John Wang, a professor at the Shanghai Maritime University.

In 1983, Saadé made the decision to cross the Suez Canal and extended the company lines to Mina-Qaboos in the Gulf of Oman. Jacques Saadé was trying to prepare the company for the "Far East" to win a competitive advantage over other carriers.

The 1978 war in Lebanon prompted him to move to Marseille. This is where he set up Compagnie maritime d’affrètement (CMA) with his brother Johnny on September 13 the same year. The company initially operated services between Marseille, Beirut and Syria. Saadé said: "I wanted the sea. Marseille is beautiful and the sea looks a little like that in Beirut."

Jacques R. Saadé (Arabic: جاك سعادة; 7 February 1937 – 24 June 2018) was a French-Lebanese billionaire businessman. He was the founder and chairman of the CMA CGM, a French container transportation and shipping company, the fourth largest in the world as of June 2020.

Jacques R. Saadé was born on 7 February 1937 in Beirut, Lebanon. His father was born in Latakia, Syria to a family of Lebanese origins and his mother was from Lebanon. He graduated from the London School of Economics in 1957 and took over the family business after the death of his father. His father had "established plants in Syria, we were producing tobacco, cotton seed, olive oil, ice, etc."