 During a visit to Canada in 1969 he took over a small import-export agency, Afrex, that did business in Africa.On a subsequent flight to Nigeria he met the brother of the President of Nigeria with whom he went into business supplying wheat, flour, steel, cement and other goods to Nigeria and other African countries making him a millionaire by the age of 30.The bulk of his business career has been spent in the shipping and oil sectors; he once owned or managed 13 shipyards around the globe, still retaining one shipyard in the United Kingdom, and he still has a global oil-trading and refuelling business.