Loucas Haji-Ioannou; Greek shipping magnate (father of easyJet owner)
Hyfler/Rosner
January 2, 2009
Loucas Haji-Ioannou: Greek shipping magnate
Loucas Haji-Ioannou built up one of the largest
independently owned commercial shipping fleets. He achieved
commercial success, and amassed a large personal fortune, by
exploiting the growth in demand for oil supertankers in the
1970s and 1980s.
He was born into an impoverished Greek Cypriot family in the
Troödos mountains in Cyprus, the eldest of 12 children. He
went out to work to help the family when he was 16 and first
went to sea in 1948 when he was 21.
Haji-Ioannou's early career was as a salesman with his uncle's
Jedda-based business in Saudi Arabia. When his uncle died
unexpectedly, Haji-Ioannou started his own import-export
business in Saudi Arabia, becoming one of the few foreign
businesses allowed to trade within the kingdom without a
local partner. As the oil-fuelled Saudi construction boom
gathered pace in the late 1950s, Haji-Ioannou became the
sole importer of Heraklis and Titan cement, and it was on
these trades that he built the foundations of his commercial
empire.
He bought his first ship in 1959 at the age of 32. Working
out of London, he purchased of a 10,500-tonne cargo ship
named Nedi, after his wife. His first vessels carried
so-called dry cargoes, such as food and building materials.
Troodos, the name of the company he founded, bought its
first oil tanker in 1969. For the next decade Troodos
operated dry cargo ships and oil tankers side by side. In
the second half of the 1970s, as the value of oil cargoes
rose in the aftermath of the 1973 oil crisis, Haji-Ioannou
focused his attention on tankers. The risks in this line of
business deterred would-be rivals, but Haji-Ioannou's
willingness to meet the challenges made the 1980s a golden
decade for Troodos.
By 1990 Haji-Ioannou was the world's largest independent
shipowner, with Troodos Shipping controlling a fleet of more
than 50 vessels, mostly registered under the Greek Cypriot
flag. He employed about 2,000 seafarers.
During the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s, oil tankers loading
from Iran's vast Kharg Island oil export terminal were easy
targets for Iraqi aircraft equipped with French-supplied
Exocet heat-seeking missiles. Shipping insurance rates went
sky-high, deterring many owners from entering the war zone
and making the trip barely economic for those who were
prepared to brave the threat posed by missiles.
After taking advice from British security specialists,
Haji-Ioannou equipped his ships with extra safety systems
that enabled him to obtain insurance at much less punitive
rates. As one of the few owners prepared to lift from Kharg,
his charter rates were so high that the purchase price of a
tanker could be recouped within two round-trip voyages from
Kharg to the safety of the Strait of Hormuz.
Between 1982-85 he added 27 ships to his fleet, and by 1990
he was acknowledged as King of the Tankers.
Haji-Iaonnou was fęted as one of the last of the Greek
shipping titans. "Niarchos and Onassis may have had more
glamorous lives - but Loucas owned more tonnage", one
follower of the industry observed. Not that Haji-Ioannou
recoiled from enjoying his riches: "Monte Carlo is the best
place in the world to really enjoy your wealth," he once
said.
He endowed a Haji-Ioannou Foundation with more than $10
million. Among other things the foundation founded a school
in the village of Pedhoulas in Cyprus, near where he was
born. The charity also supports the Greek Institute of
Cardiology. Haji-Ioannou is survived by Nedi, his wife of 50
years, and three children, Polys, Stelios and Clelia. Polys
runs a shipping fleet of his own, Stelios founded easyJet,
with capital put up in part by his father, and established a
range of other businesses under the "easy" banner with
characteristic orange liveries. Clelia is president of the
Haji-Ioannou Foundation. She is a philanthropist and a noted
art collector.
Loucas Haji-Ioannou, shipowner, was born on September 15,
1927. He died on December 17, 2008, aged 81
MWB
GO GIANTS
Mark