Foremost Group

Foremost Group is a privately held American shipping company, headquartered in New York City. It operates globally, chartering vessels to companies in the dry bulk shipping industry. Its clients include Bunge (St. Louis, MO), Cargill (Minnetonka, MN), Dreyfus (Rotterdam), MOL (Tokyo) and NYK Line (Tokyo). Foremost Group was founded in 1964 by businessman James Si-Cheng Chao and his wife Ruth Mulan Chu Chao, who each immigrated to the United States from China by way of Taiwan. Its chair and CEO from 2018 to 2024 was Angela Chao, the sixth daughter of the company's founders and the third of their children born in the United States.