Spiros Latsis

Spiro Latsis is a Greek businessman and one of the world's richest people, in 2006 ranked 51st by Forbes on the World's Billionaires list at US$9.1 billion [http://www.forbes.com/lists/2006/10/QX6W.html] . He is the son of the Greek shipping magnate, John Latsis, who died in 2003.

The family's largest holding is its EFG Bank European Financial Group, a large banking conglomerate with private banking operations in many jurisdictions.

Spiro graduated with a PhD in philosophy from the London School of Economics, an education that many regard as instrumental to his financial success, although his inheritance from his father is the primary source. The Latsis family fortune which is managed by Spiro, includes more than 40% in EFG Eurobank Ergasias, the Greek arm of his Swiss EFG Group and more than 30% in Hellenic Petroleum, the major petroleum player in the Balkans, through his ownership of Paneuropean Oil and Industrial Holdings S.A. Latsis group also controls PrivatAir, a large private jet owner and operator and Lamda Development, a major real estate group based in Athens. Lamda Development projects include "The Mall" complex in Athens, which opened in 2005.

He is a longstanding friend of the President of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso, whom he invited on a trip on his luxury yacht. In 2005 this incident made Spiro the centre of a corruption scandal involving Barroso. The British MEP Nigel Farage requested that the European Commission disclose where the individual Commissioners had spent their holidays. The Commission did not provide the information requested, on the basis that the Commissioners had a right of privacy. The German newspaper Die Welt reported that the President of the European Commission, José Barroso had spent a week on the yacht of Spiro Latsis. It emerged soon afterwards that this had occurred only a month before the Commission approved 10.3 million euro of Greek state aid for Latsis' shipping company. [http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/article223215.ece] In 2006 Mr. Latsis received an honorary doctorate from Witten/Herdecke University in Witten, Germany.

ee also

*Lists of billionaires

Publications

*Latsis, S. "Situational Determinism in Economics" The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 1972 23, pp.207-45
*Latsis, Spiro J. Ed. "Method and Appraisal in Economics" Cambridge University Press 1976 ISBN 0521210763
*Latsis, S.J. "The role and status of the rationality principle in the social sciences" in "Epistemology, Methodology and the Social Sciences" R.S.Cohen & M.W.Wartofsky (Eds) Dordrecht: Reidel 1983

External links

* [http://www.forbes.com/finance/lists/10/2004/LIR.jhtml?passListId=10&passYear=2004&passListType=Person&uniqueId=QX6W&datatype=Person Forbes.com: Forbes World's Richest People]