Stervos niarcos biography
Home / Celebrity Biographies / Stervos niarcos biography
In Greece, Spyros financed an expansion of the grain trading business of his wife’s family.
In 1949, he ordered 10 from needy yards in the UK. He soon followed Onassis in turning to the ruined shipyards of Germany as well as placing contracts with builders in the Netherlands and Sweden.
During the coming years, he vied with Onassis and American-born magnate Daniel K. Ludwig to build the world’s largest tankers.
In the 1980s, he spent more time in Geneva, managing his global business. He acquired Haras de Fresnay-le-Buffard, a stud farm in Basse-Normandie, France, and Oak Tree Farm in Lexington, Kentucky. One of his favourite works was the 1585 Pieta by his countryman El Greco, acquired reportedly to celebrate the 1954 New Year. He rose in their esteem, even though he also became well-known for enjoying the night-life of Piraeus and Athens.
It has already committed €100 million to health, welfare and education to help combat the effects of Greece’s current economic crisis.
Stavros Spyros Niarchos
| Shipping magnate Date of Birth: 03.07.1909 Country: Greece |
Biography of Stavros Spyros Niarchos
Stavros Spyros Niarchos, also known as "The Golden Greek," was a Greek shipping magnate born on July 3, 1909, in Athens.
Driven by Niarchos and his main rivals, the size of tankers doubled during the next decade. It would later carve a place in history for itself when it was selected on the basis of its size and thick steel plating for conversion into an ice-breaker to test the viability of tanker voyages through the Northwest Passage. He was buried in the family vault in Lausanne.
.
In 1948 he put the first ever vessel in the newly-created ship registry of Liberia – the tanker World Peace.He was a believer in long-term employment with the oil companies, although when the oil majors began to pay less lucrative rates in the 1960s, he considered selling off his tanker fleet.
It was during this time that he convinced his relatives that the company could make greater profits by owning its own ships.
During World War II, while serving as a naval officer, a part of the trading fleet he had built with his uncle was destroyed. Together with his brothers-in-law he built a flour mill in the port of Piraeus. Together with Onassis, he was the original ‘Golden Greek’, a description which was eventually applied to a generation of dynamic shipowners from Greece who were particularly inventive in surfing the post-Second World War boom in demand for sea transportation.
He outlived Onassis and he also outdid his rival in terms of fortune and the size of his fleet, even though in the eye of the public he was sometimes upstaged by his former brother-in-law.
Stavros Niarchos was born in 1909, the son of Spyros Niarchos and his bride Evgenia Coumandaros, both originally from Sparta.
In the early 1950s, against the sensitive backdrop of the Korean War, Niarchos found himself indicted by the US Justice Department and his US-flag vessels were seized. During the Second World War, a total of six of his vessels were sunk by German submarines but all his ships were heavily-insured and Niarchos came out of the war richer than he went into it. Both had been briefly married before.
He ended up with arguably the world’s finest and most valuable private collection. He is the first-born son of shipowner and businessman Philip Niarchos, a national benefactor and collector of important works of art – Van Gogh, Picasso, and Basquiat among many others – who was named the 3rd richest Greek for 2024 through Forbes’ list, with a fortune of $2.8 billion.
A keen swimmer and sailor, he also had what were regarded as the finest yachts of their time, the 190 ft sailing yacht Creole and its successor, the steel motorised super-yacht Atlantis. Niarchos' business thrived, and he became a billionaire. Largely thanks to his losses during the conflict, he was successful in obtaining rights to purchase two of the total Greek allotment of 98 Liberty Ships and afterwards he went after surplus Liberty and Victory freighters and T2 oil tankers.
Emerging from the war, Niarchos had been slightly behind Onassis in both shipping and romance.