Aristotle Onassis

The son of a well-to-do tobacco merchant, with some training in foreign languages and business from the Evangelical School of cosmopolitan Smyrna, Aristotle Onassis will start his business career in Buenos Aires. After a few months of working nights as a telephone operator, he establishes the Aristotle S. Onassis Import-Export company in 1924 with the help of his father and uncle, who had already founded a tobacco export business in Piraeus. The tobacco the Onassis family imported from the Near East in Buenos Aires was lighter than the Cuban and Brazilian tobacco used in the Argentinean market and tobacco industry. Aristotle Onassis is thus able to set up a small business aimed at women smokers, an early indication of his entrepreneurial acumen. Let us not forget that smoking became more prevalent among women during the interwar period, which saw the emergence of the feminist movement and the movement of the emancipation of women. By 1932, he has amassed the respectable sum of £50,000 in capital.

In 1932, the year his father dies, he makes a life-changing decision: he turns to shipping. He spends six months working in the London office of Ithaca shipowners the Drakoulis brothers, before purchasing two cargo ships of 5,500 gross tonnage from the Canadian Steamship Company for £3,775 each in 1933, in the midst of the Great Depression. The ships, anchored in the St. Lawrence River, are World War I relics.

He names the two ships after his parents. The "Onassis-Penelope" and "Onassis-Socrates" set sail on the Atlantic trade routes, launching the greatest legend in Greek shipping history. The young Aristotle Onassis is aware that he will be viewed as an outsider in the world of the traditional Greek shipowners because his family has no history in shipping. He needs to prove himself worthy of membership in the shipping elite of the time, which is based in London. He will do so in a methodical, stubborn, and heretical fashion.

Becoming aware of the rising demand for oil, he becomes a trailblazer by being the first Greek to use tankers. In 1938, he builds his first tanker, the 15,000-ton tanker “Ariston”, in Gothenburg, Sweden. He charters it to Jean Paul Getty's Tidewater Oil Company to transport oil between the United States and Japan. This also marks the beginning of Onassis' relationship with the oil companies. In 1939, he makes his next decisive move: he establishes his first Panamanian company, Sociedad Maritima Miraflores Ltd., at the Panamanian consulate in London. His merchant ships now sail under the Panamanian flag. From that point forward, Onassis uses only offshore companies and flags of convenience for his business activities, whether at sea or in the air.

His third tanker is in the final stages of construction in Sweden when World War II breaks out. The decision of the neutral Swedes to ground several foreign ships, including the “Ariston”, will catch him off guard but will not deter him.

Onassis is constantly on the move. He is a passionate and shrewd globetrotter who divides his time between Paris, Buenos Aires, Oslo, and London. In 1940, he settles in New York, from where he manages his fleet of four tankers – the “Callirrhoe”, the “Artemis”, the “Antiope” and the “Aristophanes” – during the war. In 1945, his fleet consists of six ships with a combined gross tonnage of 51,318, but by 1955 it has increased fifteenfold, to 77 ships with a combined gross tonnage of 791,324. By 1965, it has doubled to 1.5 million gross tonnage, with almost the same number of ships, while in 1975, it nearly doubles again, reaching 2.5 million gross tonnage. How did he achieve the significant increase that occurred between 1945 and 1955?

His rise to the top is the result of three extremely successful and daring business moves. The first is the purchase of a fleet of 12 American-built Liberty ships (cargo ships that were mass-produced during the war), which provided him with the capital for his next business venture: the acquisition of a fleet of T2 tankers from the United States Maritime Commission. Even though this was against American law at the time, he was successful thanks to the assistance of American lawyers, banks, and oil companies. The third venture is decisive: he spots a brilliant opportunity in the shipyards of post-war Germany and places an unprecedented order for 18 tankers. In 1953, he builds the first "supertanker" (46,000 tons) in Hamburg. He will name it after his first wife, Athena (Tina) Onassis. She is the youngest daughter of Chios-born Stavros Livanos, the "patriarch" of Greek shipping. They marry in 1946 at the Cathedral of the Holy Trinity in New York. Their two children, Alexandros (1948) and Christina (1950), take part in the grand ceremonies for the fleet's new acquisitions, occasionally smashing the champagne bottle over their bows.

With another bold move that surprises both allies and rivals, Onassis signs a deal with Saudi Arabia in January 1954, causing a stir around the world due to the deal's far-reaching global implications. That same year, he moves his center of operations to Monte Carlo, with Olympic Maritime serving as his main shipping agency. Over the next few decades, his maritime empire grows at an exponential rate. Friends and foes alike recognize him as a pioneer in Greek-owned shipping. With his insight, daring and determination, Aristotle Onassis not only rises to the top of the shipping world of his day; half a century later, in 2000, Lloyds List of London, the most important shipping journal in the world, dubs him “the world's leading shipowner of the 20th century”.

In 1953, Onassis gains control of the Société des Bains de Mer (SBM), which owns the Monte Carlo Casino as well as hotels, theaters, and other properties. In 1956, he establishes Olympic Airways after purchasing the rights to operate the ailing TAE Greek National Airlines from the Greek state. This makes him one of only two private individuals in the world who own their own private airline (the other being the American businessman Howard Hughes, who owns TWA).

On April 6, 1957, the airline begins operations with passenger service standards that today, given the expense, seem unthinkable. Olympic, boasting one of the best safety records in the world, soon begins to offer flights to all five continents. Onassis terminates the contract with the Greek State in late 1974, but Olympic Airways is renationalized on August 4, 1975, after his death.

In 1963, Onassis buys Skorpios, a small, barren, and arid island opposite the Greek island of Lefkada. He transforms it into a private earthly paradise, planting trees, building guesthouses and harbors, and creating beaches and a farm.

He does not subscribe to the principle of living in obscurity; on the contrary, he constantly seeks out the public spotlight. The international press goes wild as Skorpios and Onassis’ "floating palace", the yacht "Christina", host the world’s most famous politicians, businessmen and artists (among them, the British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, Prince Rainier of Monaco, the Italian industrialist and owner of FIAT Giovanni Agnelli, the Swedish-American actress Greta Garbo).

His first marriage officially ends in 1960. He enters a long and tempestuous affair with the grand diva of opera, Maria Callas, until, in 1968, he shocks the world again by marrying Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, widow of assassinated American President John F. Kennedy, on Skorpios.

On 24 January 1973, his son Alexander dies in a plane crash at Elliniko at the age of 25. His untimely and unexpected death is a severe blow for Aristotle Onassis, from which he never recovers. He passes away two years later, on March 15, 1975, in the American hospital in Paris. He will be buried alongside his son and his sister Artemis on Skorpios. The island will also be the final resting place of his daughter Christina, who passes away on November 19, 1988, in Buenos Aires.

Aristotle Onassis leaves a bequest for the establishment of the Alexander S. Onassis Public Benefit Foundation as part of his handwritten will.

The executors of his will, among them some of Onassis’ closest associates, take all necessary steps to ensure that his last wish is carried out. The Foundation’s headquarters are in Vaduz, Liechtenstein. It is a condition of the will that the Public Benefit Foundation draws its resources from a Business Foundation, which will operate independently alongside it.

The Alexander S. Onassis Foundation's main priorities are culture, education, the environment, health, and social welfare. Its activities are motivated by its founder's desire to highlight the potential of a better Greece by releasing the vital forces that are currently hidden, untapped, and obscured within it.

The original members of the Onassis Foundation's board of directors, appointed for life by Aristotle Onassis in his will in 1975, were, for the most part, his trusted executives and business associates. Pavlos Ioannidis, the last of them, passed away in 2021 at the age of 97. All board members not named by Onassis in his will are elected for a fixed term by the board itself, according to a specific and prescribed set of criteria.