A.P. Moller–Maersk is now open to looking at a possible acquisition of Germany's DB Schenker, the logistics arm of Deutsche Bahn which was put for sale last year.

Its chief executive officer, Vincent Clerc, made the comment after announcing the company's fourth-quarter results. 

He said the company has reconsidered its earlier stand on a potential bid for the forwarder — which is among the top 5 airfreight forwarders — as the transport sector has shown strong earnings despite the impact of COVID-19 and a shift in the shippers' perception towards carriers also owning a forwarder.

"Our strategy is very clear, we need to diversify our revenue streams and our earning streams towards the more stable and less volatile part of the supply chain, which is pretty much anything outside ocean/2PL," Clerc told the investor call.

"In that respect, having something like a Schenker coming on the market is definitely something that Maersk cannot simply say we are not even going to look at," he added.

The Maersk chief noted that a deal of this size "will have consequences whether we do the deal or don't do the deal."

"Because it changes the landscape in logistics," Clerc said.

The Maersk chief added that there is also a "fundamental price issue" and whether the company could see a synergies case that is compelling.

"And then on the freight forwarding side, I think one of the things that has changed is the resilience of the earnings on the other side of Covid, which you can see when you look at both Schenker and some of its competitors," Clerc said.

The Maersk CEO also referenced the CMA CGM Group's ownership of CEVA Logistics which has proven to be successful.

"The fact that we have one company in CMA [CGM] that has been able to house a 2PL and 3PL offering under the same roof and has been able to do that as far as we can see successfully," Clerc said.

"So certain de-synergies that we may have feared in the past may not be what we thought they were. It would not be responsible for us not to look into that, and then we will see where this goes," he added.

In December last year, Deutsche Bahn AG — the current owner of DB Schenker — launched the sale process for its logistics subsidiary DB Schenker.

The German state rail operator noted that the DB Group had issued an official announcement laying out an "open and non-discriminatory process" for the sale of the shares, saying that the condition for a sale is that it "must have apparent economic advantages for Deutsche Bahn in all respects."

Interested parties had until February 6 to submit their registration documents after requesting additional information by January 15.

According to various reports, several logistics and shipping companies are interested in purchasing the company. Some of these companies include Abu Dhabi Ports, DHL, DP World, DSV, Maersk, MSC, and UPS.