25 years is not much in the grand history of shipping – the lifespan of just one well-built handy-sized bulk carrier. But for many of us, the last 25 years encompass our careers and our friendships and define much of what we are proud to have achieved.

25 years has captured the agony and ecstasy of shipping cycles; teaching an industry to stick together whenever possible and win with style. Great personalities have appeared and disappeared, vessel values and freight rates have behaved like no one expected them to, capital has created and destroyed. Ship- ping demand has mirrored the development of the world; from Japanese steel to Russian grain to a synchronized global recovery and the industrial ascent of China. Shipyards in Brazil, the US and North Europe have lost their way while China may do to Korea what Korea did to Japan.

Shipping cycles, like history, repeat themselves – but yet they are never the same.

The industry has moved from primarily family owned businesses to include 100 public companies. Bilateral loans have been supplemented by KS and KGs, DISs and MLPs, Shipping Trusts, IPOs, HY Bonds, Securitizations, ECAs, SPACS, syn- dications, mezzanine debt, profit sharing charters, leveraged leases, subsidies, increased regulations, Basel I, II, and III, defaults, bankruptcies, recapitalization and consolidation, lots of banks and not so many banks, open and closed cap- ital market windows and transactions of all shapes and sizes.

As we celebrate the 25th Anniversary of Marine Money, what we are really celebrating is all of you, who have written an important chapter in the history of this great and special industry.

The agenda this year features remarkable presentations from some of the most influential and thoughtful individuals in our business today. Their ideas will propel us all forward. So please come join us in New York City on June 19, 20 and 21, 2012 for a celebration of our 25 years, but more importantly your own achievements past and still ahead!