The opening session for this year's Connecticut Maritime
Association Shipping Conference is titled, "We've always
been an industry, now we need to be a business." The subtitle
explains that the session will explore how the maritime industry
can "contend with a world of challenges and still make
money." These are, perhaps, not new questions, but they are
ones that have assumed increasing importance as we start the ninth
year of what seems to many to be an eternal economic hangover.
Not all areas of the business have been stagnant, of course, and
there have unquestionably been opportunities to make money in these
past few years. But there have been many pitfalls as well, and we
have seen the effects on many fronts, from a proliferation of
maritime arrest and attachment actions, arbitrations and
litigation, bankruptcies, and distressed workout deals, to
ever-expanding and stricter regulatory activity, to active and
aggressive criminal environmental enforcement actions.
