Carnival Corporation & plc announced that Roger Chen has been appointed chairman in China, effective January 1, 2016. In this new role, Chen will have responsibility for representing all of Carnival Corporation's brands in China to continue growing the company's presence and scale in the region. Chen will report directly to Alan Buckelew, chief operations officer for Carnival Corporation, who relocated to Shanghai in 2014 to oversee operations in China. Buckelew will continue to provide strategic leadership to drive the company's long-term growth plans in Asia. Michael Ungerer, recently named chief operations officer-shared services for Carnival Asia, continues in his strategic role to support growth across the brands in Asia, reporting to Michael Thamm, CEO of Costa Group, with a dotted line to Chen. Most recently, Chen served as China president for Volvo Group, representing the company's interests across all business groups in China. With the appointments of Roger Chen and Michael Ungerer, Carnival Corporation continues to bolster its Asia leadership team, which already includes veteran brand leaders Buhdy Bok, president of Costa Asia, and Anthony Kaufman, executive vice president, international operations for Princess Cruises. Among their overall responsibilities, Bok and Kaufman oversee operations in China for their respective brands, which currently anchor Carnival Corporation's market-leading presence in China with four total ships.

In December, the company announced it will build two new 135,500-ton ships with Italian-shipbuilder Fincantieri S.p.A. for Costa Asia for deployment in China by 2020.