CMA CGM
French shipping company
Compagnie maritime d'affrètement - Compagnie générale maritime, commonly known as CMA CGM is a French ocean transportation and logistics company. Headquartered in Marseille, France, company operations include maritime transportation, port operation, supply chain management, and warehousing.
The company has a presence in 160 countries with 400 offices, 750 warehouses, 155,000 employees, and a fleet of 593 vessels. CMA CGM serves 420 of the world's 521 commercial ports and operates 257 shipping lines. CMA CGM is the third-largest container shipping company in the world. For the 2024 fiscal year, the company reported an annual revenue of US$55.48 billion.
The company was founded in 1978 by Jacques Saadé, and the name is an acronym derived from its two predecessor companies, Compagnie Maritime d'Affrètement (CMA) and Compagnie Générale Maritime (CGM), which translate to "Maritime Freighting Company" and "General Maritime Company", respectively.
History
The history of CMA CGM can be traced back to the middle of the 19th century, when two major French shipping lines were created, respectively Messageries Maritimes (MM) in 1851 and Compagnie Générale Maritime (CGM) in 1855, soon renamed Compagnie Générale Transatlantique in 1861. Both companies were created partly with the backing of the French State, through the award of mail contracts to various destinations, French colonies and overseas territories as well as foreign countries. After the two World Wars, the two companies became "State owned corporations of the competitive sector" (Entreprise publique du secteur concurrentiel), i.e., companies that, while owned by the State, were run as private for-profit businesses operating in competitive markets.
The public source identifies “CMA CGM” as french shipping company. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around French, shipping and company.
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Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1023867. VIAF identifies the subject as 137213400. The Library of Congress control number is n99276508. 5 of 7 selected statements include explicit references; 4 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2024, 1978, 1851 and 1855.
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This entry incorporates text from “CMA CGM” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.