Onassis

“work. In his mind’s eye he could see Monte Carlo awakening from the unnatural slumber and reverting to the glory of the past. One of his exciting visions was of a new outer harbor big enough to accom¬ modate the Queen Mary and the Queen Elizabeth and attracting a big international cruising clientele. There was not a port in the Mediter¬ ranean capable of taking big passenger liners without subjecting them to the noise, smoke, and dirt of a commercial harbor, as in Genoa, Naples, Marseilles, or Barcelona. In Villefranche and Cannes the swell was so strong that it was impossible to embark or disembark pas¬ sengers during more than six hours at a time. Onassis visualized oceangoing liners coming in like yachts and staying while their pas¬ sengers flew on quick excursions to Paris, London, Rome, anywhere in Europe. It would put Monte Carlo among the great international harbors of the world and, he reckoned, attract two thousand visitors to Monaco every day. A man whose visions quickly solidify into hard figures, he worked out that even at twenty-five dollars a head a day, even without gambling, this represented a secure income of fifty thou¬ sand dollars a day. The project might require an investment of at least thirty million dollars but this was not an amount to deter Onassis.”

“Onassis’ business conduct. When he has made a decision, his staff takes over, whether it is in Hamburg, where Reiter works for him,”

“terms: “As a Greek, I belong to the West. As a shipowner, I belong to capitalism. Business objectives dictate the details of my operations. My favorite country is the one that grants maximum immunity from taxes, trade restrictions, and unreasonable regulation. It is under that country’s flag that I prefer to concentrate my profitable activities. I call this business sense.” “That’s not how I put it,” he said later when”

“Since he did not need a floating warehouse but very much wanted to own a ship, he came to the conclusion that it would be sound busi¬ ness to buy a bunch of secondhand ships cheaply at this time of economic depression but—most important—to keep them laid up for one, two, maybe three years, and move them (the technical term for operating ships) only when the economy picked up and the risk of loss had receded. Ships were constantly in his mind. With his friend Costa Gratsos”

““A curious man, Onassis,” Gratsos said, casting his mind back over these days. “He explores, asks a hundred questions, orders a report, asks more questions arising from it, never accepts a statement without checking. He masters the most complicated subject—then makes his decision.””

“—“Considering what has happened in these last ten years, who can foretell what the future holds?”—and instinctive action is more in his line. He will not say what he sees in the dark seas on which he”

“Unlike other tycoons, he dislikes an entourage (“It is undignified for people to be kept hanging around waiting for a command,” he says), invariably travels alone and without luggage except for the little brown attache case, has suits, shirts, shoes waiting for him wherever he goes. His multinational executives are constantly on to”

“with a polite refusal. But Aristotle Onassis, as is his habit, was not deterred and persisted, neglecting no approach which offered even the faintest prospect of success. The first favorable response came from New York’s National City Bank, on whose president, Howard C. Sheperd, he brought his considerable powers of persuasion to bear, arguing that the funds he was seeking were for the purchase of per¬ fectly sound American ships which, moreover, the United States gov¬ ernment was anxious to sell. The negotiations were protracted and nerve-racking and went hand in hand with efforts to secure employment for the ships if and when they came into his possession. For months on end the days of Aristotle Onassis were taken up with meetings, consultations, calculations, as a constant procession of engineers, lawyers, bank officials, government agents filed past the persistent argonaut, or he past them. One little Greek was the pinpoint of a big deal linking an American finance institution with an American government agency, and it was a matter of tremendous satisfaction to him when, at long last, as he put it, he managed to start the ball rolling. The National City Bank succumbed to the blandishments of his reasoned plea, but the conditions were not what he had hoped for. The bank would advance only comparatively small amounts, no more than 50 percent of the purchase price of the ships. Repayment, instead of being spread over ten years, was to be within six to twelve months and guaranteed by employment of the ships which would be carrying mainly coal to France, Germany, and South America. What was ultimately at stake for Onassis was the ownership of a large fleet of ships which, even under such stringent financial condi¬ tions, would be paying for themselves within a few years. The sixteen Liberty vessels might take longer to earn their price than his Ariston, which had paid for herself in one year, but in the long run the fleet would be his and, free of mortgage, would long continue to earn him a substantial income.”

“They flew in to a tremendous welcome, but one had to know Onassis very well to appreciate the deep-seated streak of humility which made him delight in the opportunity of walking in the shadow of a truly great man. The British Ambassador Sir Charles Duke had traveled from Rabat to meet Sir Winston, King Mohammed’s personal entourage was there to bid him welcome. Omar ben Shemsi, Governor of Marrakesh, resplendent in his colorful robes, extended the city’s greetings, the staff of the Hotel Mamounia was present in force, a Moroccan guard of honor presented arms—it was almost an occa¬ sion of state. Ari Onassis stayed for dinner and promised to return soon with the Christina to take Sir Winston on a cruise. He spent the night at the hotel but was on his way back to Europe before dawn. Someone estimated that it had cost him five thousand dollars to dine with Sir Winston in Marrakesh.”

“Pour etre heureux, il faut vivre en cachette.”

“In his mind’s eye he visualized a ship with a capacity of half a mil¬ lion cubic feet of grain, which might have cost one million dollars to build in 1919 or 1920, that is, ten years earlier. Now, in the year 1930, such a ship could be bought for thirty thousand dollars, al¬ though it had run less than half its life span. As an importer always concerned with storage, he calculated that it would cost six or seven times that amount—at least two hundred thousand dollars—to build an open-storage hangar, just a roof without walls, not counting the price of the land. A ten-year-old ship good for another decade would be a floating warehouse for the price of a Rolls-Royce. To Onassis, recalling his reasoning, it had a sound built-in safety factor. Even if his arithmetic proved faulty, nothing was lost, because at that time the ships could have been sold for scrap and would have fetched twice the amount invested.”

“the American Greeks—some years later Onassis was involved in nego¬ tiations to buy Twentieth Century-Fox but they came to nothing. As a matter of fact, though he liked movies, he was never enthusiastic about movie-making and confided to friends that his close association with Hollywood had robbed him of his illusions. The way he put it in his graphic language: “When I saw how the cooking was done, I did not care to eat.””

“been full. He was in one of his jocular moods: “I am in business only in a little way,” he told a reporter who mentioned his hundred ships, “that’s no more than eight percent of the world’s merchant fleet,” he added, “just a tiny bit.” Monte Carlo, he said, was just a hobby.”

“AS he was wont to do, Aristotle Onassis was sitting on the deck of the Christina staring out at the wide expanse of the sea. He liked the loneliness of the night when all was quiet and he could be alone with his thoughts for hours, sending them out, as it were, across the ocean and over the horizon like tentacles to bring back new ideas and solu¬ tions to old problems. The subject that agitated him at this turbulent”

“Not one to look back in anger, Onassis set about infusing new life into his modest little business. When he took it over in the second half of 1956, the Greek National Airline boasted one single DC-4 and only half a dozen DC-3’s; the only foreign service was one weekly flight to Paris and London. What the airline needed was the Onassis touch, the Onassis label, and the Onassis money. He renamed it— what else?—Olympic Airways, formed a new company to which he made about fifteen million dollars available. Operating an airline was a new experience which required close study, and he was soon asking questions, questions, questions, learning as he went and enjoy¬ ing the challenge. Although this was a difficult business involving very big financial risks, he seemed to revel in it. Was it a hobby? The”

“Another summer was at hand and the virtually unrestricted free¬ dom of choice—go anywhere, do anything—made it all the more difficult to decide. East, West? The Caribbean, the Pacific? The an¬ swer was simple—Venice! The season was in full swing when the”

“He gave the press a lesson in shipping economics. To have a steady source of income, he said, a major tanker operator needed to keep only 40 percent of his ships on medium or long-term charter. “If you manage that, you can go to sleep and laugh about the other sixty per¬ cent.” Smaller operators, keeping their ships on the outside chance of making a profit, were bound to get into trouble, but owners like him could afford to sit tight until the storm was over. Asked how much it cost him to sit tight, he threw out a figure: “Forty thousand dollars a day, I guess.” But one reporter seeing him presiding over a gay party at the Monte Carlo Sporting Club, noted that he did not look like a man who was losing all that money.”