How we make the Top 100
No ranking is ever perfect, but we hope our snapshot of global influencers creates debate, and helps set the scene for the year to come
PUTTING together a list of the 100 most influential people in the shipping industry is never an easy task. There is not one metric that can cover businesses as dispersed as shipowning and operating, financing, insurance, legal, technology, regulations and registries.
Our list is based largely on analysing industry events and business decisions of the past 12 months, which inevitably comes with context, which we consider too.
The ranking is borne out of a collective editorial discussion within the Lloyd’s List newsroom and it is our intention to produce a useful snapshot of the forces at play within our industry and some forward-looking nods to the trends into which each profile delves.
As a rule of thumb, the individuals on our list should have influence at company level, so senior executive or owner; they should exercise influence nationally or regionally, through business links or ties to an association; and, crucially, they should be influential internationally too.
The people running the world’s largest fleets will no doubt always find a place on our list; so too those with their hands on the purse strings. But it is the power brokers behind the scenes in politics, regulation and technology that are arguably affecting the greatest change in our industry. We will do more to identify them in future.
We will also do more to counteract industry – and our own – bias, both conscious and unconscious. Shockingly, in 2011, there were only two women in the Top 100 list. Not because there weren’t great women doing amazing things, but because our old, pale and predominantly male (sorry chaps) editorial team just didn’t have them on their radar.
To head off any howls of derision over reverse-discrimination, or predictably dull accusations of tick-boxing, or quotas, I can assure you, we do not add anyone to the list – woman or man – unless they deserve it on merit. However, if great people are being overlooked due to bias, then it is our job to identify them, and add them to the mix.
This year, there are 10 women in the main list and many more in our Top 10 lists; small steps, but as the industry evolves, we do too.
We hope you find the Lloyd’s List Top 100 a compelling annual examination of our industry and the personalities that drive it forward.
