(Bloomberg) -- A.P. Moller-Maersk A/S Chief Executive Officer Soren Skou will step down and will be replaced by Vincent Clerc, the current head of the transport giant’s ocean and logistics business.

Clerc, 50, will start Jan. 1 as part of a “planned CEO transition,” the Copenhagen-based company said on Monday. Skou, 58, was a teenager when he joined Maersk as a trainee and has been with Maersk his whole career. Clerc, a Swiss international and thereby the first non-Dane to lead the 120-year-old company, joined Maersk in 1997.

Clerc will take the top job at Denmark’s biggest company at a time when container freight rates are falling drastically after a period of record profits sparked by pandemic spending. He also faces the task of de-carbonizing a fleet of more than 700 vessels. Maersk, which is responsible for 0.1% of the world’s global emissions, plans to become carbon neutral in 2040.

“Now is the right time for Maersk, for Vincent, and for me to make this transition,” Skou said in a statement. He will leave Maersk but continue to work elsewhere “at non-executive level,” he said.

Skou was promoted to CEO in 2016 to dismantle the conglomerate structure of the family-controlled company, and under his tenure the company sold its oil and gas businesses and focused on transport. Since he took over, Maersk shares have gained 14% per year on average, compared with about 26% for peers. The Copenhagen-based company has paid shareholders large dividends.

Since Clerc has been part of Maersk’s executive group for years, he’s unlikely to make changes to “Maersk’s overall strategy, bolt-on M&A ambitions in Logistics or regarding its capital allocation policy,” Brian Godsk Borsting, a senior analyst at Danske Bank, said in a note.

(Adding comments from analyst in last paragraph)

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