Business History

Sea Containers was originally established in 1965 to own and lease marine cargo containers to ocean carriers and shippers worldwide.  The core container leasing business grew to make Sea Containers a major player in the industry and in later years the group successfully diversified into the business areas of passenger transportation and leisure to complement the existing business.

In 1998, Sea Containers and an affiliate of GE Capital Corporation, formed GE SeaCo SRL (“GE SeaCo”) as a joint venture, organised under the laws of Barbados, to engage in the business of leasing marine containers to ocean carriers and shippers and leasing certain land containers.  Since then GE SeaCo has successfully developed into one of the worlds largest container operating lessor with a fleet of approximately 1 million Twenty-Foot Equivalent Units (“TEUs”) under management.

On 15th October 2006, parts of the Sea Containers Group filed for Chapter 11 protection in the US bankruptcy court, Delaware, USA, in order to achieve a financial restructuring process for the group.  A plan of re-organisation was filed for the group late 2008, and was finally ratified by the court on the 24th November 2008.

As part of the plan of re-organisation the SeaCo group of companies was newly formed on the 11th February 2009 (the plan of re-organisation effective date) to hold the existing container leasing investments of Sea Containers Group, which includes the 50% JV interest in GE SeaCo and its own container holdings which are managed on behalf of SeaCo by GE SeaCo.

Business Scope & Strategy

SeaCo Ltd has two key strategic objectives; the first is to maximise the value of the existing owned container fleet managed by GE SeaCo on its behalf; the second is to work with GE to grow and maximise the value of SeaCo's 50% JV investment in GE SeaCo.