Financial firms are more involved in the
ownership and operation of intermodal assets.
With the growth of international trade, shipping and port operations became an
increasingly profitable industry, if not always in terms of rate of return then surely
in terms of the volume of this return. This attracted the attention of financial firms,
such as banks, insurance companies and even pension funds, seeing transportation
assets, such as port terminals, as an investment class part of a diversified global
portfolio. This provided large quantities of capital to develop intermodal assets and
an increase of their “spot” value. Global financial firms were also looking at
opportunities large enough to accommodate the vast quantities of capital at their
disposal and terminals represented an asset class that suited well the scale of this
allocation.