When Jacques Saadé moved his family to Marseilles in 1978, he told them they would stay a year while the civil war in Lebanon, their previous home, died down. Thirty years on, Mr Saadé, now 71, and his family remain based in the French port and growth at the shipping business he founded that first year is so rapid he has commissioned a new, 50-storey headquarters tower, now quickly rising skywards.

CMA CGM, Mr Saadé’s company, is one of two container lines to have risen rapidly from Mediterranean foundations, like the Marseilles tower, to dominate much around them.