Live from CMA 2010!

If it’s the views of global industry heavyweights you’re after, the CMA manages to snare its fair share, persuading some legendary names to stop by at the conference venue at the Hilton Hotel at Stamford over the years.

Many are speakers, some are delegates lurking quietly in private rooms doing deals, and others are simply honoured as the CMA’s annual Commodore.

This year Philippe Louis-Dreyfus, president of the France-based Louis Dreyfus Armateurs Group will be honoured as Commodore.

As always it will be hard to cap the performance of the previous year’s Commodore, and with 2009 honouring Capt Wei Jiafu, group president and chief executive of Cosco Group, Mr Louis-Dreyfus has lots to live up to.

Last year’s press conference given by Capt Wei was one of the more unusual  I’ve encountered in my career in journalism.  At a time when the dry bulk industry was in crisis, a coterie of journalists, Cosco executives, and assorted hangers-on  were keenly anticipating Capt Wei’s press conference.

One of shipping’s most influential figures delivered a 30-minute performance peppered with  long unrelated anecdotes from which kernels of relevant information needed to be extracted.

As it turned out, Capt Wei was right: the dry bulk sector did largely recover in the second half of 2009 as he forecast. And his energetic and self-assured delivery meant he skirted around questions about the state of Cosco’s newbuilding orderbook, delivered with the loud and forceful delivery of a man used to addressing large audiences of several thousand  in open spaces.

Capt Wei’s loquacious nature contrasted strongly with previous Commodore, Norwegian shipping magnate, John Fredriksen. Apparently when he accepted the award at the industry’s gala dinner he uttered two words to the expectant audience: “Thank you.”

I’m sure Philippe Louis-Dreyfus will have more to say than that this year.