Georgia Demetriou is an experienced specialist with a demonstrated history of expertise in maritime law, arbitration, banking law and European law across multiple jurisdictions. Her in-house career in the shipping sector – which Demetriou states has ‘always been my passion’ – started in 2015 and saw her quickly promoted to taking over the entire responsibility of OSM’s legal department. Her role includes the provision of ‘full legal services, including but not limited to operational and corporate matters in an international organisation which provides full service solutions to the offshore and maritime industry’. As the single point of contact for such a large shipping operation (OSM employs approximately 11,000 employees from 44 countries, is involved in operations worldwide, has 30 offices locations around the world and 500 vessels), Demetriou is a key figure in the successful operation of the company’s exploits. She is in charge of ‘[providing] training on all legal matters’ to colleagues and ‘[familiarising the] OSM team with national and international laws and regulations in more than 30 jurisdictions where we have presence, as well as commercial provisions in agreements with customers’. Internal processes she has overseen such as trainings, a new reporting information system and automation of tasks have helped improve the legal department’s functionality and efficiency, providing internal clients with ‘excellence in our services’ and ‘highly valued’ guidance.

A true business enabler, Demetriou has led the charge to provide the company with safeguards against fraud incidents as well as fulfil the company’s commitment to commercial transparency. She explains: ‘I promoted the internal system IRIS (Improvement Reporting Information System) which can be used to record and analyse non-conformities, customer complaints, suggestions for improvement, propose changes in procedures, and deviations from any regular process and audits. Actions have also been taken to prevent fraud incidents, to ensure anti-money laundering policy, to secure all assets and to establish new procedures and policies which have successfully demonstrated our commitment to commercial transparency. I have also promoted a TRACE certification for high risk areas and completed a comprehensive due diligence process’. She has also helped facilitate smoother relations between business units, having managed to ‘narrow the gap between our operations and holding companies and maintain alignment with our other offices worldwide’. In addition to her commercially-astute legal advice to OSM, Demetriou is active in the company’s social responsibility initiatives including local community development as members of the UN Global Compact Network. Her credentials are further bolstered by her past academic career that saw her gain an LLB from the University of Sheffield as well as an LLM in international maritime law from the University of Wales, Swansea.