Stevedoring operations in seaports assumed a dramatic importance for shipping lines, that secured dedicated berths in many regions. More recently, the institutional turn in ports drove the overseas expansion of aggressive pure stevedoring companies rapidly taking the control of the market. For quite long time carriers and pure stevedores fiercely battled each other both for defining the contractual terms of handling services and for securing new concessions. Currently this scenario is slowly changing. Therefore, this paper aims at revealing the contractual and equity forms of co-operation that are emerging in ports between shipping lines and terminal operators.