‘My devotion and passion for my work are my driving forces’, states Alexandros A. Pattakos – legal and insurance counsel for N.J. Goulandris Maritime. A renowned legal expert in the shipping industry, Pattakos has been working in the sector since 2003, having built up a deep understanding of all related legal issues through an in-house career that has seen him undertake several different roles within it.

His first grounding in the field came as a claims officer, handling a variety of claims and reviewing legal documentation together with being involved in insurance placings with a ship insurance broking company. In 2011 he joined N.J. Goulandris Maritime and began heading the legal department of the company, a distinguished role given the company’s longevity and reputation as one of most respected ship management groups leading the shipping industry for over 50 years. Describing his career highlights, Pattakos explains his involvement in handling a piracy case in Somalia that had ‘a major impact [on me] both as a professional but also as a person. It helped me to understand the need to interact in a balanced and composed manner even [during] the most strained conditions’.

Understanding different cultures and their application to legal challenges have also been a feature of his career, Pattakos explaining that ‘negotiating, handling and successfully concluding complicated aspects of an important deal with a large company of a different culture; these have all introduced to me different approaches, uncharted to me which though I welcomed and tried to espouse and adopt with the purpose of personally developing both as a professional but also as a person’.