Ioannis "Yiannis" Latsis (; 14 September 1910 – 17 April 2003), also known as John Spyridon Latsis, was a Greek shipping multi-billionaire business magnate notable for his great wealth, influential friends, and charitable activities.
The year of his death (2003), Forbes magazine ranked Yiannis Latsis number 101 on its list of the world's richest people, with a fortune estimated at $6.4 billion. He was educated at the Pyrgos School of Commerce and the .
He started as a deckhand, eventually working his way up to ship's captain in the merchant marine.
He bought his first cargo vessel in 1938 and by the 1960s, owned a fleet of ships. In 1955, Latsis purchased a cargo vessel, the Marianna. Three years later, he purchased his first oil tanker, the Spyros, which was used for the transportation of liquid molasses from Egypt to Greece and the UK. In the following years, his fleet expanded significantly, with the acquisition of passenger vessels, cargo ships and oil tankers. In the 1990s, Latsis’ fleet was one of the largest under Greek ownership.
In the late 1960s, he diversified his business to include oil – establishing Petrola in 1975 — and construction, building (among other things) oil refineries in Greece and Saudi Arabia,
Business empire
The Latsis commercial empire has been closely involved with German firm Hochtief in both constructing and managing Spata airport. Through Hellenic Petroleum, one of Greece's largest oil companies – in which another partner is the Russian oil giant LUKoil – it holds the contract for all fuel supplies to the airport, through an EU-funded pipeline built by a Latsis engineering company. Hellenic Petroleum, according to its own accounts, in 2000, paid $912 million to acquire a 34 percent interest in the Athens Airport Fuel Pipeline Company.
A Latsis company also has a 50 percent stake in the huge contract for running most of the airport's "ground-handling" services – almost everything except control of the aircraft themselves.
Latsis's development arm, Lamda, is a partner with Hochtief in a series of vast, part-EU funded motorway projects across Greece, as part of the "Trans European Network". And between 1999 and 2004, during the time when Spata airport was completed, the commission last week revealed that the giant EFG Eurobank Ergasias banking group, controlled by Latsis family interests, held an exclusive contract to handle all EU structural funds coming to Greece, totalling €28 billion.
Philanthropy
His charitable works began with the establishment of the Latsis Scholarships Institute in 1970
Awards
He was awarded the Golden Cross from the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople and the Grand Cross of the Order of the Phoenix by Greece.