COSCO Shipping has achieved the second of five conditions for its acquisition for Orient Overseas with U.S. antitrust approval. It now needs approvals from EU and Chinese antitrust authorities as well as China’s NDRC for the deal to become unconditional. That doesn’t mean it would be fully approved. For example it may need CFIUS approval in the U.S. to actually be completed, which in turn may need port asset disposals. The unconditional U.S. antitrust clearance is something of a surprise. While the combined entity would only hold an 8% share of total inbound containerized traffic, it wou...