Dear TradeWinds,
As the years pass, one becomes accustomed to reading of the deaths of people one has known, but I was particularly saddened when I read in your columns today of the passing of my friend Elias Kulukundis.
I had known Elias both professionally and personally since the 1980s. I made some introductions for him when he was embarking on his first solo shipowning ventures and in the 1990s he invested some capital in the hedge fund which I co-managed with Jay Goodgal.
More significantly, Elias and I shared a love of literature and good food, and I was pleased and honoured to be asked to give a little editorial advice when he wrote his autobiography, Bold Coasts.
Man of action
Elias, although coming from one of the oldest and most distinguished Greek shipping families, was by nature a student, and his interests were broad (including especially Russian literature), but he could also be a surprisingly decisive man of action.
The best known example of this was his act of opposition to the Greek military junta in 1969, when he entered Amorgos using fake papers to extract his father-in-law, who had been confined there under house arrest.
This may make him sound like a privileged dilettante, but that would be far from the truth. Elias thought deeply about life and responsibilities. Study was what absorbed him, and he was determined to follow his own path through life.
This led to conflicts with his family, which are described with great honesty and no rancour in his autobiography. He was a complicated man, somewhat diffident in person, but possessed of great determination when he had made up his mind to do something.
To use a somewhat outmoded expression, he was a gentleman and a scholar. There are not many in our industry of whom that could be said.
shipping, Lazard, and chairman, Global Maritime Forum
