Italy’s secretive shipping tycoon emerges as lead player in Li Ka-Shing’s $25 billion ports deal

ROME - Mr Gianluigi Aponte, the secretive Italian billionaire who founded MSC Mediterranean Shipping, has emerged as a powerful broker in a ports deal with Hong Kong tycoon Li Ka-shing, that has been praised by US President Donald Trump but is fiercely opposed by China.

Mr Aponte and his family-controlled Terminal Investment Limited, known as TiL, are the main investors in a consortium that has proposed a US$19 billion (S$25 billion) accord to buy 43 ports from Mr Li’s CK Hutchison Holdings, people familiar with the matter have said.

The consortium includes BlackRock and its Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP) unit, which will control two of the ports in Panama.

TiL, according to its website, lists its shareholders as MSC, BlackRock’s GIP and Singapore sovereign wealth fund GIC. 

The deal has thrust 84-year-old Mr Aponte into an uncharacteristically high-profile position while underscoring his firm’s increasingly dominant role in worldwide shipping. MSC has grown to control about a fifth of global shipping capacity, and Mr Aponte has a net worth of US$25.6 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.  

The low-key Mr Aponte, silver-haired and slight of build, rarely speaks in public or gives interviews. His closely held company does not publish financial reports or strategy updates. 

Still, he is a member of the exclusive club of ultra-wealthy European shipping magnates who earned huge windfalls during the pandemic, and who have been expanding their empires ever since. 

The group includes the Maersk-Uggla family behind Danish container line AP Moller-Maersk, Mr Klaus-Michael Kuehne, Germany’s richest man, who has a 30 per cent stake in Hapag-Lloyd, and Mr Rodolphe Saade and his family, who control CMA CGM. 

Seafaring roots

The Aponte family traces its seafaring roots back to 1675, according to its corporate website. Mr Gianluigi Aponte was born near the Bay of Naples, where the family traditionally ferried goods and passengers. 

He trained as a ship’s captain and later operated ferries shuttling wealthy tourists to island resorts like Capri and Ischia. It was on one of those trips that he met his future wife, Ms Rafaela Diamant, the daughter of a Swiss banker.

Mr Aponte started MSC in 1970 after purchasing an old German break-bulk ship, and the following year he bought a second vessel, naming it after his wife. 

He soon began buying secondhand container ships, some from scrapyards, as he looked to break into a business dominated by Maersk and Hapag-Lloyd. After carving out a niche on under-served routes, MSC eventually distinguished itself by emphasising price over delivery speed.

In the late 1980s Mr Aponte made the jump into the leisure segment, and MSC Cruises became the world’s third-largest cruise brand. Like his European shipping peers, Mr Aponte pushed heavily into ports and logistics.

MSC’s pandemic-era profits fuelled a further rapid expansion drive, and by 2022, it had achieved its founder’s goal of becoming the world’s biggest container carrier, dropping Maersk into second place. 

Mr Aponte’s son Diego Aponte became MSC’s group president in 2014. Still, the senior Aponte remains highly active in MSC’s management as group chairman, with decision-making closely concentrated among the extended family, according to industry executives.

The younger Aponte also heads the board of Geneva-based TiL, where his father is a director, according to its website. BLOOMBERG