What was your earliest memory? This question has always puzzled me. I am sure it was a light bulb. However, I would not be surprised if that recognition derives from Gunther Grass’ novel The Tin Drum.
Did you go through training/university or straight into work? As a high-school student my dream was to study at medical school and become a chief physician at a large hospital. Instead, my path led me to a master’s degree in mechanical engineering. After I completed my studies, my father gave me a wake-up call to enter his company.
Who were your mentors? Fact is that I neither had any lasting mentorships nor any worthwhile to mention throughout my career. My ambition was always to seek and learn the tools which would enable me to form my business to perfection and be independent.
Ambition or talent — which is more important? Talent is certainly the seed from which roots can grow. Ambition is what waters the seed. Sir Alex Ferguson said those without ambition will sit on the substitutes’ bench. “A wall will never consist of one stone alone.”
What would you have done if you hadn’t gone into shipping? A question I never had the chance to think about. I was managing and owning a Caterpillar dealership, selling and servicing ship propulsion systems, and then diversified into building ships in 2002, putting them into third-party management. When the Lehman Brothers crash triggered the crisis, I wished I had not diluted all my assets into ships and had the cash I used to have in my account to retire early. However, it was too late. Business as a tanker owner/operator has no end to its learning curve, and now, with hindsight, I can say it was fortunate for my career and hopefully that of my children to have gone into shipping.
What is your biggest extravagance? Having looked up the meaning of this word.
How do you relax? The main source is sleeping. I also relax when I come home from work and sit at the dinner table discussing daily events with my wife. Then there are my passions. The managers of Lehman Brothers indirectly brought back something to my life I had forgotten: free time! I have a workshop in our garden where I restore vintage vehicles, primarily motorbikes. When I have the time, this is the best means for me to divert my thoughts away from day-by-day business.
What would you like to own that you do not possess? A large sailing yacht that I could call my second home and discover many places in the world.
When are you happiest? When our children, who are studying in Madrid and Philadelphia, join us sailing in the Greek waters or skiing in Austria. We chat for hours about their and our lives and experiences.
Is politics important to you? No — or it is better to say, with growing age and increasing frustration — less. As someone who has lived most of his life in a third-world/emerging country, I have seen corruption dominate public life, several coups, human rights violated, a non-intact justice system, a press that has lost independence and the fear that you could be robbed of your assets. Am I starting to get homesick for the achievements Europe has worked for so hard?
What would you change in shipping? I would like charterers, the major oil and chemical companies and traders not only to demand the highest quality but also to transparently reward higher-quality operators. Isn’t it gross that as ship operators we see nightmares where we wish for spills and disasters to give our clients a wake-up call on quality?
Which four people, living or dead, would you like to invite to dinner? John F Kennedy, Helmut Schmidt, Ludwig Erhard and Mikhail Gorbachev.
What would your 20-year-old self say to you today if you met? He would be critical that some of my achievements could have taken place earlier.
What keeps you awake at night? If I haven’t solved a technical problem during a restoration of one of my vintage motorbikes.
What are your favourite song, book and film? Fleetwood Mac’s Go Insane; Stiller by Max Frisch; Out of Africa.
What is the most important lesson you have learned? Resilient behaviour: to try to manage stressful situations with a positive outcome.
What are your best and worst characteristics? Ambition. It is my best and worst characteristic.
What is your greatest achievement so far? To have the loveliest family I could think of.
Your greatest disappointment? The frictions I had with my father in the first years I was together with my late wife Claudia.
What ambitions do you still have? To become a top-level Champions League player in our business as a technical operator of chemical tankers.
Lorenz Weinstabl is chief executive of Istanbul-based Atlantis Tankers Group, which operates a dozen 3,446-dwt to 6,416-dwt chemical and clean petroleum tankers.
Weinstabl’s father came to Turkey during the Second World War, working for Deutsche Orient Bank, before forming a company to represent and distribute German machinery. His son took over the business in the 1990s, eventually selling Caterpillar (MaK) engines for ships. The current group was formed in 2002 when Weinstabl teamed up with Turkish shipyard executive Mehmet Aksoy and Dane Kenneth Jan Madsen to build ships under the Armona Denizcilik banner. In 2009, Armona took over the technical and crewing management of the Atlantis fleet, and in 2013 the commercial management.
Weinstabl went to school in Istanbul and completed his master’s in mechanical engineering in Germany. He can often be seen driving to his office on a 1936-built Norton motorcycle used by the Turkish Army after the war.
