OREANDA-NEWS. April 2, 2009. In Saint Petersburg the General meeting of the Association of Sea Merchant Ports (ASOP) elected Maksim Shirokov, General Director of Ust-Luga Company OJSC, to the Board of Directors of the Association. Ust-Luga Company has been a member of the ASOP since 2006.

"In the current economic situation representatives of the port business and logistic companies, now more than ever, should joint their efforts to ensure uniform principles of further development of the transport infrastructure of our country", stressed M. G. Shirokov. "The Association enables us to develop common decisions and to coordinate our crisis management actions."

Maksim Shirokov graduated from the Moscow Military Institute under the Ministry of Defense in the specialty of Oriental Studies. In 1996 he received the MBA diploma of the US Pacific Coast University in the specialty of Economy and Marketing, in 2003 — a diploma in the field of strategic planning of the London Business School (London, Great Britain). He has good command of English and Arabic. He is married, with a son and a daughter. His hobby is tennis and jazz.