Thursday, May 24, 2018

Anybody Find a Million Missing Shipping Containers?

From Reuters, May 17:

P&R's million missing ship containers puzzle German prosecutors
Managers of insolvent P&R Group are being investigated after it was discovered the investment firm sold nearly one million more shipping containers than it owned, the Munich prosecutors’ office said on Thursday.

Once the world’s biggest lessor of shipping containers, P&R sells containers to investors and its sister company in Switzerland rents them out to shipping companies.
P&R later buys back the containers from investors.

P&R, which is based near Munich, has sold some 1.6 million containers to around 54,000 investors for a total 3.5 billion euros ($4.12 billion).

But a tally made after its German units filed for insolvency earlier this year has shown that P&R only has a fleet of around 600,000 containers, administrator Michael Jaffe said in a statement.... MORE