CMA CGM, headquartered in Marseille, is the world’s third largest container shipping company, with $55.48 billion in 2024 revenue, 160,000 employees and 593 vessels that call at 420 of the world’s 521 commercial ports. One half of its history begins in the 1850s with two state-backed French lines built on government mail contracts, Messageries Maritimes and Compagnie Generale Maritime, merged in the 1970s under President Valery Giscard d’Estaing into the state-owned CGM. The other half begins in 1978, when Jacques Saade founded CMA as a small Mediterranean liner service that embraced containerization. In 1996 the French government privatized CGM and the startup CMA bought it.

Acquisitions followed: Australian National Line in 1998, Delmas in 2005 for 600 million euros, Singapore’s NOL and its APL line in 2016 for $2.4 billion, and CEVA Logistics in 2019 for $1.65 billion, plus an air cargo arm in 2021 and a $10 billion venture with Stonepeak for U.S. port terminals. The CMA CGM Benjamin Franklin was the largest ship to call at a U.S. port when it reached Los Angeles in late 2015, and the flagship Jacques Saade carries over 23,000 TEUs, with new ships built for LNG, biogas and methanol. Between 2009 and 2011 its vessels were repeatedly caught carrying hidden weapons, and the company said it was the victim of fraudulent cargo declarations before suspending Iranian export operations in November 2011. The Saade family owns 73 percent, and Rodolphe Saade, chairman and CEO, has bought media outlets including La Provence and La Tribune.

• In November 2009 South Africa found T-54 and T-55 tank parts under rice sacks in containers from North Korea declared as bulldozer parts.
• In October 2010 Nigeria seized 13 containers from Bandar Abbas, labeled glass wool and stone, holding 107 mm rockets and ammunition.
• In 2018 the CMA CGM Washington lost 137 containers overboard in a North Pacific storm.
• Somali pirates hijacked the company’s luxury ship Le Ponant in 2008.
• CMA CGM is the main sponsor of Olympique de Marseille and co-title sponsor of the Decathlon cycling team.