Many family-owned shipping businesses historically operated ownership structures based on bearer shares. However, the compliance environment has changed significantly in the past ten years. Bearer shares were abolished in the UK in May 2015. In the US, ownership through bearer shares will require disclosure of the ultimate beneficial ownership, except where the shares are publicly traded. Even in jurisdictions where the model is still available legally, and beneficial ownership is not a matter of public record, current due diligence requirements around anti-money laundering and compliance will require companies to identify their beneficial ownership to their financing banks and contractual counterparties. We will explore ownership structures in the modern compliance regime, and the extent to which these structures are driven by the financing that is available to shipping businesses in 2017. We will look at equity and debt financing and the nature of the modern relationship between the capital provider and the company, including the growing number of partnerships between ship managers and private equity providers and the allocation of risk and liability between them.