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Lloyd's annual The 100 Most Influential People in Shipping has revealed a strong presence of Greek ship owners and their key role in maritime trade.
14 Greeks are featured in this year's Lloyd's 100 List: among them, Yiannis Angelicoussis, Petros Pappas, Angeliki Frangou, Petros Livanos, Georgios Prokopiou, the chairman of the Greek ship owners’ organisation Theodoros Veniamis, Konstantinos Konstandakopoulos, Nikos Tsakos, etc. Some of them have come very high up in the list despite the competition of giants, e.g. the Aramco oil company, the greatest container carrier in the world AP Moller-Maersk, Chinese state-owned companies like Cosco, the Norwegian tycoon John Fredriksen, etc. Greek ship owners reportedly control 16.25% of the world fleet and 46.7% of the European one, based on their ships’ displacement. Most of their vessels belong to the latest generations and employ high technologies.
Yiannis Angelicoussis, owner of ASG, ranks highest among the Greeks. Compared to last year, Angelicoussis has gone a notch up, mostly due to the continued enlargement of his fleet and his high-performance in the important sector of LNG transport. Second among the Greeks came Petros Pappas (11th in the overall ranking), head of Star Bulk Carriers. Together with Oaktree, with a total of 139 ships, he controls the largest cargo fleet among the US listed companies. Pappas aims to add even more new vessels to his company.
Third among the Greeks and 15th on the list is Angeliki Frangou, the CEO of Navios Group, a holding of listed companies. This year, the holding has continued to expand its fleet. Right after her came Georgios Economou, head of DryShips, a cargo bulk shipping company. He is followed by Petros Livanos (21) Georgios Prokopiou (25), Theodoros Veniamis (48), Konstantinos Konstandakopulos (50), Nikos Tsakos (54), Vangelis Marinakis (67), Simos Palios (81) Petros Georgiopoulos (83), Yiannis Platsidakis (86), and Dimitris Melisanidis (97).
China – a maritime force to be reckoned with
China’s President of Xi Jinping tops the 2014 Loyd's List due to both the growing influence of the Chinese economy and the Chinese demonstration of force in rejecting the P3 Network Vessel Sharing Agreement. The latter was meant to unite the routes and the shipping services of a number of container carriers as part of the efforts to reduce their operating costs and enhance their bargaining power. China failed to endorse the agreement and it was cancelled as an alliance based on it would be pointless without the participation of the second strongest economy in the world.