The Baltic Exchange Lunch with the Greek Shipping Co-operation Committee

Greek shipping’s London is largely invisible from the street, and this is one of the afternoons it takes a room. The Baltic Exchange hosts the Greek Shipping Co-operation Committee at Wax Chandlers’ Hall on Gresham Street — a drinks reception, then a three-course lunch for more than two dozen of the wider Greek shipping community.

Guy Hindley opens it in one of his first engagements as the Baltic’s Chairman, with the year’s freight costs and emissions rules as his subject and the Committee’s continued support as his thanks. The Committee itself has been the Greek fleet’s voice in London since 1935; the Baltic now counts more than 45 member companies and over 140 individual members from Greece, a figure that has risen sharply across the past seven years.

The room is closed and the guest list is the point. What it marks is the oldest working relationship in this calendar: a City institution and a Greek fleet that have shared the same square mile for the better part of a century.