Sultan of Brunei

"In the fight to find buyers in an impossible market, little remained untried. The brokerage firm Clarkson in London came up with an apparently unlikely buyer. The world's richest man, the Sultan of Brunei – the oil-rich small state on the island of Borneo – was willing to buy three supertankers for 80 million dollars each. The contact was between the brokerage firm and the Sultan's dispatched worker in London. The Sultan might have liked to become a shipowner, but they were not going to operate the ships. Seller John Fredriksen had to lease the ships back at a rate of 33,000 dollars every single day for ten years. The market price at the same time was 10,000 dollars a day. Despite stinging harsh conditions, Fredriksen had little choice but to accept and hope that the Sultan would not change his mind in his gold-covered palace. But he did."

"In the fight to find buyers in an impossible market, little remained untried. The brokerage firm Clarkson in London came up with an apparently unlikely buyer. The world's richest man, the Sultan of Brunei – the oil-rich small state on the island of Borneo – was willing to buy three supertankers for 80 million dollars each. The contact was between the brokerage firm and the Sultan's dispatched worker in London. The Sultan might have liked to become a shipowner, but they were not going to operate the ships. Seller John Fredriksen had to lease the ships back at a rate of 33,000 dollars every single day for ten years. The market price at the same time was 10,000 dollars a day. Despite stinging harsh conditions, Fredriksen had little choice but to accept and hope that the Sultan would not change his mind in his gold-covered palace. But he did."