Shipowner Sophocles Zoullas believes the highlight of his shipping career has yet to take place.

The Madison Avenue veteran of Eagle Bulk Shipping and Zenith Shipping told the Marine Money Ship Finance Forum in London: “I’m an inherently restless person, I’m probably my biggest critic.”

He referred to “celebrations” along the way over the past 30 years, rather than highlights.

Among these were founding and floating Eagle Bulk to turn it into the “top midsized bulker fleet in the world”, as well as getting a return for investors, and focusing on environmental, social, and corporate governance issues 15 years ago.

The low points came from events outside the market, such as the collapse of the banking system.

Eagle Bulk took wing in 2005 during an unprecedented wave of shipping IPOs — largely within the dry bulk sector — seen as an investor proxy play on the growing Chinese economy.

The outfit was originally led by chief executive Zoullas and chief financial officer Alan Ginsberg, with backing from private equity’s Kelso Group.

After an initial period of strong returns and growth, Eagle Bulk and most of its dry bulk peers were sideswiped by the global financial collapse of 2008. It entered into a pre-packaged Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganisation in 2014 and Zoullas left the year after.

Zoullas called the restructuring a low point because it was “a lot of work”.

But it was also a high because “Eagle today is flourishing and still public. I never let go of anyone I didn’t need to, I didn’t sell an asset because I had to,” he said.

What is a shipowner?

As for the future, Zoullas is keeping his crystal ball private.

“What I will share with the group is I think the definition of a shipowner is changing. It connotes the old way of owning ships, operating ships, buying low, selling high and chartering them in the intervening period. I think that definition is changing rapidly,” he said.

And Zoullas added: “In terms of me, I think it’s investing across multiple asset classes, but also up and down the capital structure, so everything from equity, to preferred [shares], to mezzanine, to senior secured.”

He also said he will look at things laterally and not in a traditional way.

“To use a Wayne Gretzky term, skate towards where the puck’s going, not where it is,” he told the conference, referring to the Canadian former professional ice hockey player.

Zoullas said he is a fan of diversification and has experience with product tankers, dry bulk and container ships.

He currently runs a fleet of product tankers, bulkers and container ships, and says the markets have tended to counterbalance each other during “black swan” events such as the pandemic and the Ukraine war.

The Zenith boss said he is also a big believer in “putting your money where your mouth is” on decarbonisation.

“We should be early adopters. You have to embrace it,” he added.