Peter Georgiopoulos T'87
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"Go for something that no
one else is interested in."
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Greek Shipping Magnate, Circa 2005
He's Greek, he's chairman and CEO of the world's sixth-largest tanker company,
and he owns a Greenwich Village town house that was featured on HBO's
Angels in America. At first glance, 43-year-old Peter Georgiopoulos seems
to fit the stereotype of an old-world shipping tycoon. But this New York City
native didn't inherit his fleet—he built it himself. Starting with $15,000 of his
own money and $600,000 from an investor, Georgiopoulos has parlayed an
investment company with one ship into a publicly traded company with assets
of more than $2 billion, including 47 tankers transporting crude oil for the likes
of ChevronTexaco and Sunoco.
How did he do it? Very deliberately. Thanks to his father, a maritime lawyer,
Georgiopoulos became fascinated by the shipping industry as a child. "What
caught my imagination was the people who made tremendous fortunes," he admits
with a laugh. After college, he worked for a well-known shipping company
and "saw how inefficient some of these old-fashioned, family-run businesses
could be. I thought if I went to business school, learned how to run a modern
corporation, and then worked outside shipping for a while that I could bring
some of those disciplines and techniques to the business."
After earning his Tuck MBA, he worked as an investment banker and then for
an oil-tanker brokerage firm. He went on his own in 1991, launching Maritime
Equity Management with "bright idea number one: mixing a Wall Street opportunity
with a shipping opportunity." He pitched about 100 investors before a
hedge-fund manager bought into his radical—but extremely profitable—business
plan. He would buy discounted shares of shipping partnerships then force the
sale of assets at a premium. Six years later his company owned six ships.
With a track record established, Georgiopoulos morphed his company into
an operating business renamed General Maritime Corporation. He then put
"bright idea number two" into play: a hedge he devised against industry volatility.
"There was no derivative market in shipping at the time, so I crudely created one,"
Georgiopoulos says of innovative deals that allowed him to buy out a lessor's
contract at any time—deals he exercised when the market heated up. "I captured
the best of both worlds, protecting my downside risk while capturing the upside
of the market. Those techniques, that strategy came to me from Tuck."
Combining MBA smarts, Wall Street analysis, and a family-business tradition
(a brother and sister work with him) has paid off. But his advice to new MBAs
is a little different. "Go for something that no one else is interested in. If you'd
told someone that you wanted to be in coal or steel in 1999, they'd have said
you were crazy. Now people are making fortunes there. You want to consider a
business that's somewhat in disfavor, but that's still a real business."
While he hasn't yet attained Onassis-like financial heights, Georgiopoulos isn't
complaining. "I don't have a yacht, and paparazzi don't follow me around. But
that's okay. I have a small farmhouse in upstate New York, and I'm happy."
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