Dear Friends and Colleagues –
Thank you all again for your overwhelming support and attendance last night at the highly informative Current State of the Hellenic Maritime Shipping Industry Panel Discussion at the 3 West Club. It was superbly moderated by Fotis Giannakoulis, Executive Director, Equity Research / Morgan Stanley, with an excellent professional and highly recognized panel of members in the industry made up of Dr. Anastasios (Tasos) Aslidis, Chief Financial Officer, Treasurer and Member Board of Directors/Euroseas, Tasos Pantelias, Managing Director at Seaport Global Securities, and Apostolos Tsitsirakis, Group Strategy & Corporate Development/Tsakos Energy Navigation. They had everyone literally “glued to their seats” and listening intently on this fascinating and mesmerizing subject. The Consul General of the Hellenic Republic in New York, Dr. Konstantinos Koutras was in attendance throughout the evening and addressed the audience on this important industry to the Hellenic economy prior to the start of the panel discussion. We acknowledge and thank him for his insightful remarks.
At the event, EMBCA awarded two scholarships to students of Queens College in addition to the three we awarded on November 3rd at the Development, Design & Construction Panel Discussion event at The Russian Tea Room. These scholarships related to Professor Alexiou’s “Hellenic American Project” and the Queens College Library dedicating space to Hellenic American archives and the linking of those archives with the archives of the Hellenic National Library. These scholarships were per EMBCA’s announcement on its September 22 event dedicated to the “Hellenic American Project” and which many attended as well as Hellenic Prime Minister Tsipras representing the Hellenic Republic.
EMBCA’s President Lou Katsos, who introduced the event, also provided further details on the proposed monument to be dedicated in a dual fashion first to the enormous contribution of the Hellenic merchant fleet (with a catastrophic loss of over 2,000 Hellenic seamen and 75% of the fleet) in the war effort during WW2, and second as a Thank You to America for the re-vitalization of that fleet by offering the “blessed” Liberty Ships (107) which became the initial nucleus of the post war modern Hellenic fleet, now the largest in the world. In addition it was mentioned that EMBCA would be working with Tom Dellis, Chris Karastathis and others to help bring the Olympias Trireme, a commissioned ship in the Hellenic Republic Navy, currently in Athens to New York as part of the joint Hellenic Republic / American activities relating to the dedication of the proposed monument.
Special thanks to Konstantine Drougos of Agro Marketing International part of the EMBCA team for his help in this event.
Best regards- EMBCA
Lou Katsos
John Fotiadis
Ahmed Hassaballa
Nick Machairas
