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The newspaper The National Herald issued the annual list of 50 Wealthiest Greek- Americans. Skill, knowledge, persistence, and timing. The people featured in the list enjoy all of these gifts, in greater or fewer amounts. and have reached the pinnacle in their fields and profited immensely, often bringing profit to those around them as well.
See the 50 wealthiest Greek Americans:
1.Jim Davis – $5.2 BILLION
James S. “Jim” Davis, the Chairman of New Balance (NB), tops the list again this year. Davis, son of Greek immigrants bought the retail sports footwear company in 1972 and took the company to new heights four years later with the development of the New Balance 320 running shoe. The company has since grown, now featuring clothing and equipment for lacrosse and soccer.
2.Haseotes Family – $4.17 BILLION
The Haseotes Family tops the list of the wealthiest Greek-American family and in 2016 they made a major company change, selling off its subsidiary Gulf Oil. The company was founded by current CEO Ari Haseotes’ grandparents, Vasilios and Aphrodite, in 1938. That year, the Haseoteses emigrated from Greece’s Macedonia and Epirus regions to the United States, purchasing a one-cow dairy farm in Cumberland, RI for $84. Cumberland Farms expanded across state lines and eventually grew to become the largest dairy farm operation in Massachusetts. In 1956, the company opened a jug-milk store in Bellingham, MA. Few convenience food stores with dawn-to-midnight service every day of the week existed in the northern part of the country in the 1950s.
3.John Catsimatidis – $3.4 BILLION
At a personal fortune estimated at $3.4 billion, John Catsimatidis remains very close to the top this year, and continues to be in the public eye, particularly as he considers another possible campaign for public office. Settling into a humble Harlem tenement as an infant with his parents from the tiny Greek island of Nisyros, Catsimatidis, 67, through decades of hard work and innovation, is a self-made billionaire. In a self-funded campaign for mayor of New York City in 2013, in which he finished a strong second in the Republican primary, Catsimatidis has hosted his own Sunday morning radio program on New York City’s AM 970 radio station, Cats Roundtable. The show is really two in one, featuring local and national news, with an array of local and nationally-known politicians and other influential guests stopping or calling in on a regular basis. Catsimatidis is chairman and CEO of the Red Apple Group, which is among the country’s largest privately held companies with 8,000 employees and estimated annual revenues of $4.3 billion.
4.Tom Gores – $3.3 BILLION
Tom Gores, 52, was born in Nazareth, Israel to a Greek father and a Lebanese mother. When he was only four, the family moved to Genessee, MI. After earning a bachelor’s degree at Michigan State University, he joined his brother Alec (also featured in this edition) in buying out companies. He founded Capital Equity in 1995, which remains one of the largest private companies in the United States. Headquartered in Los Angeles, CA, the company has offices in New York, Boston, London, and Singapore. Its in-house business development, M&A, transition, legal, real estate, marketing, finance, and operations teams enable us to resolve matters expeditiously. In 2011, Gores and Platinum became owners of the National Basketball Association’s Detroit Pistons. In August, 2016, he purchased Platinum’s stake and became sole owner. As Forbes reported when Gores first purchased the team, the billionaire is “a sports nut,” who found time amid his busy schedule to coach his daughters’ youth soccer and basketball teams.
5. John Paul DeJoria – $3.1 BILLION
John Paul DeJoria is a member of “The Giving Pledge,” a charity led by Warren Buffet and Bill and Melinda Gates. In 2016, this billionaire who finishes near the top of the list with a net worth estimated at $3.1 billion, has pledged to give more than half of it away. “The more I make, the more I get to give back. Success unshared is failure,” he told CNBC. Born to an Italian immigrant father and a Greek immigrant mother who divorced by the time he was 2, DeJoria has known poverty repeatedly: first during his childhood being raised by a single mother in Los Angeles, CA, and two periods of homelessness as an adult. Today, he is on lists of the world’s billionaires, and one of America’s richest living veterans. His John Paul Mitchell Systems hair products and Patron Spirits, both still privately held, are each worth more than a billion dollars. Paul Mitchell products are available in more than 100,000 salons in the United States and are distributed throughout the world.
6. Dean Metropoulos – $2.5 BILLION
Dean Metropoulos, is Chairman and CEO of Metropoulos & Company, a boutique buyout and management firm. He remained very high on the list, as a result of his $2.5 billion estimated worth, slightly up from last year’s $2.4. In July 2013, Metropoulos paid $410 million to buy Hostess Brands and return Twinkies to grocery shelves after the company had filed for bankruptcy protection and closed its doors. Hostess has made a remarkable turnaround and Metropoulos made news this past July by announcing the intention to take the company public. He sold Pabst Brewing for an estimated $750 million in September 2014, nearly tripling his 2010 investment. His sons, Evan, 35 and Daren, 32, are and have been an integral part of the turnaround of the acquired companies. Pabst remains one of the fastest-growing brewing companies in the United States, if not the fastest. Metropoulos is very well known in the private equity, investment banking, and financial community, having spent nearly three decades acquiring, restructuring and growing nearly 80 different businesses involving approximately $14 billion in capital in the United States, Mexico and Europe. Many of these were subsequently taken public or sold to strategic acquirers. The Greek-born Metropoulos moved to the United States with his parents at age 9. Typical of many immigrants, his parents worked hard and encouraged their children to pursue their dreams. He remains ever-grateful and humble for their sacrifices and commitment.
7.Alex Spanos – $2.4 BILLION
Best known throughout the sports world as owner of the NFL’s San Diego Chargers, Alex G. Spanos, continues to add to his net worth, finishing at $2.4 million in 2016, according to Forbes. Spanos, also founder of the real estate development company A.G. Spanos, is the son of Greek immigrants. He began his career as a baker, but in 1951 used an $800 loan to purchase a panel truck and began selling sandwiches to farm workers. He then used his profits to invest in real estate, and by 1960, he had an incorporated business. Today, his firm A.G. Spanos is one of America’s largest housing developers, and is one of the largest family-owned construction and property management companies in the nation. It has built more than 120,000 units in 19 states. Spanos handed control of the company to his sons in 2003: Dean serves as Chairman and CEO and Michael serves as President. In 2002, Spanos published his autobiography, Sharing the Wealth: My Story.
8.Jaharis Family – $2.35 BILLION
The Jaharis Family Patriarch, Michael, passed away in early 2016 at age 87. He founded Key Pharmaceuticals, Kos Pharmaceuticals, & Vatera Healthcare Partners. The son of Greek immigrants, Michael Jaharis was born in Chicago, IL. He earned a bachelor’s degree from Carroll University in Wisconsin, served in the U.S. Army Medical Corps during the Korean War, and later attended night school at DePaul University to earn a law degree while working as a sales representative for Miles Laboratories. He remained Chairman Emeritus of the Kos board until his passing.
9. Peter Nicholas – $2.3 BILLION
Peter Nicholas, co-founded the medical device company Boston Scientific with scientist John Abele in 1979, after meeting Abele at a children’s’ soccer game. Boston Scientific is a worldwide developer, manufacturer and marketer of medical devices whose products are used in a range of interventional medical specialties, including interventional radiology, interventional cardiology, peripheral interventions, neuromodulation, neurovascular intervention, electrophysiology, cardiac surgery, vascular surgery, endoscopy, oncology, urology and gynecology. In 2016, Nicholas announced that he would step down as Boston Scientific’s chairman, a year ahead of his intended retirement.
10.George Marcus -$2.2 BILLION
Born George Moutsanas in Euboea, Greece, George Marcus, together with his partner, William A. Millichap, is founder and chairman of Marcus & Millichap Company (MMC), one of the country’s premier providers of investment real estate brokerage services, and the parent company of a diversified group of real estate, service, investment and development firms. MMC’s featured company, Marcus & Millichap Real Estate Investment Services, has established itself as a leading real estate firm with more than 1,200 brokers in markets throughout the United States. In 2015, due to the company’s success, Marcus’ net worth catapulted him from millionaire to billionaire. The two partners launched a new business model nearly four decades years ago, based on matching each property with the largest pool of pre-qualified investors. Marcus came to San Francisco from Greece at age four. He completed his undergraduate studies in Economics at San Francisco State University in just two and a half years, and founded the university’s first economics club. In 2008, Marcus co-founded the National Hellenic Society.
11. Peter Angelos – $2.1 BILLION
Peter G. Angelos, is an attorney and is best known for being owner, chairman and CEO of Major League Baseball’s Baltimore Orioles. He bought the Orioles in August 1993, leading a group of investors including prominent Marylanders, including novelist Tom Clancy, in purchasing the team for $173 million, a record price at the time. The Orioles enjoyed some success early under Angelos’ ownership, making the postseason as a wild card team in 1996 and winning the American League East Division title in 1997. The Orioles’ worth has jumped 60% in two years, to close to $1 billion. Angelos was born in Pittsburgh, PA on July 4, 1929, to immigrants from the island of Karpathos. He went to Baltimore at age 11, where his family settled in the Highlandtown section. He graduated from Eastern College and the University of Baltimore School of Law, where he was class valedictorian, and went onto a lucrative career in trial law, specializing in cases involving harmful products, professional malpractice, and personal injury. A lifelong Democrat, he won election to the Baltimore City Council and served on the Council from 1959 to 1963. He ran for mayor as an independent in 1964, but lost. He has been an active supporter of national Democratic candidates.
12. George Argyros – $2.1 BILLION
George L. Argyros is well known in a wide variety of prominent circles, as his long and illustrious life has included achievements ranging from real estate, to sports, to international diplomacy. Argyros served as US Ambassador to Spain and owner of the professional baseball team Seattle Mariners. But Argyros, made his fortune in grocery stores and real estate. A second-generation American of Greek descent, he was born in Detroit, MI and raised in Pasadena, CA. Today, his privately held Arnel & Affiliates owns and manages 5,500 apartments and 2 million square feet of commercial space. In 2001, then-President George W. Bush appointed Argyros U.S. ambassador to Spain. Argyros sold the Mariners in 1989, after trying to move them elsewhere, and had also pursued purchase of the San Diego Padres.
13.Alec Gores – $2.1 BILLION
Alec Gores, 63, like his brother Tom (also featured in this edition) was born to a Greek father and Lebanese mother, in Nazareth, Israel. The family moved to Genesee, MI when he was a teenager. “My father was willing to give up literally everything he had [in Israel] and pack his bags and bring us here,” Gores told Forbes in October, 2016. “He did it for the kids, to make sure we have a better future.” Today, Gores heads the Beverly Hills-based private equity firm The Gores Group, which has $2.5 billion in assets. In July, he joined C. Dean Metropulos, also featured in this edition, to take the food snack giant Hostess public. Gores famously lost over $17 million in a three-day backgammon series to fellow billionaire JP McManus in 2012, the Independent reported, and Gores promptly “paid up like a gent.”
14.Peter Peterson – $2 BILLION
Peter G. Peterson has gone down in rankings on this list over the years, much to his credit – because he has given away a good amount of his money to philanthropic causes – though he climbed back up a bit, to $2 billion, in 2016. Having served as U.S. Secretary of Commerce under President Nixon, Peterson made his fortune as the co-Founder and former chairman of the Blackstone Group, one of the world’s largest investment firms with 25 offices around the world. Peterson co-founded Blackstone with Stephen Schwarzman in 1985. Peterson retired from the company in late 2008, selling most of his shares and receiving $1.85 billion in cash upon exiting, before taxes and meeting several trust and charitable obligations. Peterson released his newest book Steering Clear: How to Avoid a Debt Crisis and Secure Our Economic Future (Portfolio/Random House) in 2015, in which he contends that we must address our long-term fiscal challenges in order to secure a growing and prosperous economy. The son of Greek immigrants, Peterson grew up in Nebraska. Peterson devotes a great deal of his time to his foundation and other charitable activities. Established in 2008, the Peter G. Peterson Foundation is a nonpartisan organization dedicated to increasing public awareness of the nature and urgency of key fiscal challenges threatening America’s long-term future, and to accelerating action on them.
15. James Chanos – $1.5 BILLION
James S. Chanos is informally known as “Wall Street’s most notable bear.” Founder and President of Kynikos Associates, Chanos heads the world’s biggest short-selling hedge fund. He is renowned for predicting – and profiting from – the 2001 Enron Corporation scandal. His speculations catapulted him into billionaire status last year, where he has remained. Chanos is a second generation Greek-American who grew up in Milwaukee, WI. His father owned a chain of dry cleaner store in Milwaukee and his mother worked as an office manager at a steel company. He founded Kynikos Associates (in Greek, “kynikos” means cynic) in 1985 after a Wall Street career as a financial analyst with Paine Webber, Gilford Securities and Deutsche Bank. Jim Levitas, his former boss, partnered with Chanos to launch Kynikos Associates with $16 million. A year later, Levitas, unable to endure the stress of short selling, left the company. Kynikos has offices in New York and London.
16.Logothetis Family – $1.5 BILLION
George M. Logothetis is the founding chairman and CEO of Libra Group. The conglomerate consists of 30 subsidiaries with companies operating across 35 countries. He founded the privately owned group with his brother Constantine in 2003. Today George Logothetis is based in New York, while Constantine, who is Executive Vice Chairman of the group, is based in London. The diversified group was built on the decades of work of their father, shipowner Michalis G. Logothetis, who is on the Libra Group’s board and is a senior advisor. A series of strategic steps by the younger generation allowed them to extend into new areas at a time when many shipping companies were strained. Despite the financial crisis, the Libra group companies have acquired $7 billion of assets over the past several years.
17. Roy Vagelos – $1.39 BILLION
Dr. Pindaros Roy Vagelos earned a medical degree over half a century ago. Since then, he has had a long and distinguished career in healthcare, and particularly in pharmaceuticals. He served as Chairman and CEO of pharmaceutical giant Merck & Co. from 1985 to 1994. He joined the worldwide health products firm in 1975 as senior vice president of research, and became president of its research division in 1976. Starting in 1982, he served as senior vice president of strategic planning. He continued to hold both positions until 1984, when he was elected executive vice president. Before assuming broader responsibilities of business leadership, Vagelos had won scientific recognition as an authority on lipids and enzymes, and as a research leader. Vagelos, whose parents were born in Asia Minor and emigrated to the US in the 1920s, earned his bachelor’s degree with honors in 1950 from the University of Pennsylvania.
18.Demoulas Family – $1.25 BILLION
The Demoulas family, one of America’s richest families, is difficult to gauge, both in terms of net worth and current status of control of their lucrative Market Basket Supermarket chain. Nonetheless, the family’s history and contributions is notable. Their supermarket empire began in 1917, when Greek immigrants Athanasios (Arthur) and Efrosine Demoulas opened a small market selling fresh lamb in Lowell, MA. In 1950, the original store model was revamped and premiered as the DeMoulas Superette. Arthur turned the business over to his two sons, George and Telemachus (Mike) in 1954. The following year, the Superette was tripled in size and became DeMoulas Super Market. Over the next 17 years, the two brothers converted the lamb shop into a successful grocery store chain of 15 stores. The brothers each signed a will naming the other as executor of his estate, and reportedly agreed to divide the business equally between their two families in the event of one of their deaths. Both brothers had four children, and both named a son Arthur, after their father. From their youth, both cousins (George’s son Arthur S. Demoulas and Mike’s son Arthur T. Demoulas) followed their fathers in the family business. In 1971, George, then 51, died unexpectedly while vacationing in Greece with his family. Mike continued to expand the chain and began opening stores under different names, including Market Basket. Tensions began brewing between the two families and erupted in the 1990s, when it came to light that Mike had been secretly shifting his brother’s half of the company assets into his own name after George’s death. Two decades of lawsuits followed, Mike and his family on one side and George’s heirs on the other. The feud was settled in December 2014, when Arthur T., who ran the business after his father’s death in 2003, finalized a buyout of Arthur S., and the rest of George’s heirs for $1.6 billion, according to Forbes. Despite those difficulties, the business has flourished. Over the past decade it added approximately 30 new stores and a new perishable/produce distribution center, and doubled sales. Today, the Tewskbury-based DeMoulas Market Basket, Inc. owns 75 stores in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Maine, employs 27,000 people and earns more than $4 billion in annual sales.
19.Kostas & Tom Kartsotis – $1.02 BILLION
Kosta Kartsotis, 63, and Tom Kartsotis, 56, are founders of the Fossil Group, Inc., whose brand is widely associated with watches, jewelry, and other accessories, as well as clothing. Kosta serves as chairman and CEO; Tom still owns a small stake, but in 2003 founded Bedrock Manufacturing, a Texas-based private equity and brand management firm. Based in Richardson, Texas, Fossil is valued at $4.35 billion and is on Forbes’ Global 2000, a list of the world’s biggest public companies. With 400 retail locations and more than 14,000 employees, the company sells its products in 120 countries around the world. Founded in 1984, Fossil is a designer and manufacturer of the aforementioned merchandise, and also sunglasses and wallets. Its brands include Fossil, Relic, Abacus, Michele Watch and Zodiac. The company designs, manufactures and distributes with Burberry, DKNY, Emporio Armani, Columbia Sportswear, Diesel, Michael Kors, Marc Jacobs and Adidas.
20. Ted Leonsis – $1 BILLION
Ted J. Leonsis is the founder, chairman, CEO and majority owner of Monumental Sports and Entertainment, which owns and operates the professional sports teams Washington Capitals (National Hockey League), Washington Wizards (National Basketball League), Washington Mystics (Women’s National Basketball League) and Verizon Center in downtown Washington, DC. The partnership also operates Kettler Capitals Iceplex (the Washington Capitals’ training facility and front office headquarters) and the George Mason University Patriot Center. He formed Monumental Sports in June 2010 by merging his Lincoln Holdings LLC and Washington Sports & Entertainment Limited Partnership. After surviving an airplane crash landing in 1983, he resolved to “rethink my priorities and how I planned to lead my life going forward,” he explained. He drafted a list of 101 goals to accomplish. To date he has completed 82 of the tasks, including owning a sports franchise, playing one-on-one basketball with Michael Jordan, and starting a family charity foundation. In 2010, he published The Business of Happiness: 6 Secrets to Extraordinary Success in Life and Work. A pioneer of the Internet and new media, Leonsis participated in launches of the Apple MacIntosh, the IBM PC and the Wang office automation. He has led four businesses that have grown at record rates: he built Wang WP (the first word processor) from a $200 million to a $1 billion company with the largest female management team in the country. He built AOL into the first $1 billion interactive services company and the world’s biggest media company, helping to increase its membership from fewer than 800,000 to more than 8 million in a four-year span (1994-97). He retired from AOL in 2006 and currently serves as vice chairman emeritus. The grandson of Greek immigrants, Leonsis was born to a family of modest means in Brooklyn, and spent his early years there.
21.George Sakellaris – $963 MILLION
George Sakellaris is Chairman of the Board, President, and CEO of Ameresco, which is one of the largest energy solutions companies in North America. The Framingham, MA company specializes in providing comprehensive services, energy efficiency, infrastructure upgrades, asset sustainability, renewable energy, and energy information management solutions. Born in Laconia, Greece, Sakellaris founded Ameresco in 2000 and took it public 10 years later. Today it has dozens of offices throughout North America and Europe and over a thousand employees providing strong local operations. “Green. Clean. Sustainable” is the motto of the company that increases energy efficiency for federal, state and local governments, healthcare and educational institutions, housing authorities, and commercial and industrial customers. After graduating from high school in Greece, Sakellaris arrived in Bangor, ME, as a college exchange student in 1965 to go to college. He spoke little English when he first enrolled at the University of Maine-Orono, but worked his way through college and earned a BSEE degree, driven by a love of mathematics and the sciences. His parents arrived in the US in 1969 and the family settled in Boston.
22.George Behrakis – $930 MILLION
George D. Behrakis, Founder and Chairman of Mythos, LLC, a private investment company based in Lexington