• TPM25
  • March 2-5, 2025 | Long Beach Convention Center

Gordon Downes

NYSHEX

CEO and Co-Founder

Prior to founding NYSHEX, Gordon was an executive at SABMiller, a large multi-national shipper. He has also held numerous leadership positions at Maersk Line, the world's largest shipping line, and Damco, a global freight forwarder. Gordon has lived and worked in Asia, Africa, Europe, and North America. Gordon holds an MBA from the University of Cambridge, as well as a Bachelor of Commerce degree majoring in maritime economics and a post graduate degree in maritime law.

The New York Shipping Exchange (NYSHEX) was founded in 2015 to solve the problem of poor contract fulfilment caused by misaligned incentives and disconnected execution. This results in $23 billion of economic waste that impacts all shippers, carriers and NVOCCs. NYSHEX offers shared digital infrastructure that helps to align incentives, connect execution, strengthen relationships, and reduce manual work. 

Sessions With Gordon Downes

Tuesday, 4 March

  • 03:05pm - 03:45pm (PST) / 04/mar/2025 11:05 pm - 04/mar/2025 11:45 pm

    Index-Linked Contracts: Time for Another Look?
    Index-linked contracts came up in conversation repeatedly in 2024 and it’s not hard to understand why. After a year of extreme rate volatility, linking rates within contracts to a floating index accomplishes several things simultaneously: It ensures shippers’ rates don’t fall out of step with the market, risking rolling of cargo, and avoids the need to renegotiate contracts midstream as often occurs in volatile years. Yet, despite the advantages in risk mitigation and volatility in recent years, the concept has struggled to gain traction. That’s due in part to the legal heavy lifting: Shippers often don’t want to use carrier or forwarder terms and conditions, but struggle to get the other side to accept their own. Then both sides need to agree on which index to use. Finally, for any party using an index-linked contract, additional value would come from being able to hedge the chosen index using exchange-traded derivative contracts, yet such markets, though they exist, are criticized for limited liquidity and transparency and are not used by carriers, remaining largely the domain of day traders. Still, some very much believe in the concept. NYSHEX said it plans to introduce a new set of indices in 2025 to be “freely available for all carriers, shippers and NVOCCs to use for their index-linked contracts.” This session will review how and when index-linked contracts can be beneficial to shippers when used properly, and what roadblocks shippers are likely to encounter.
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