Baltic Exchange CEO Mark Jackson believes the nearly 300-year-old organization “sells trust” to the maritime industry, something that has factored heavily into its entry into the liquefied natural gas (LNG) market. 

Founded in 1744, the Baltic had its beginnings in the coffee houses of London where merchants and shipowners met. It provided rules for backroom negotiations in the days before marketplace regulations and eventually began providing market information “on the walls,” as Jackson tells it.

Today, the Baltic provides maritime market data for the trading and settlement of physical and derivative contracts. Its indices and assessments are used as a settlement tool for freight derivative trades, for benchmarking physical contracts and as a general indicator of the...