A landmark in the Vagliano’s shipping business, was the creation of a hybrid ship management office in London. The multinational dimension of their managing-agency operations made their London office a national bureau of sorts—a conduit enabling Greek shipowners to engage in international business. Essentially, this was a shipping company and agency for the national Greek fleet. Their London office created in 1858 provided the first model of a modern ship-management firm and became the driving force behind the globalization of both Greek-owned shipping and bulk shipping all over the world. The career of Aristotle Onassis was one of the results of the Vaglianos’ innovations. Onassis started his business from one of the twenty London offices that were formed after the death of Panaghi Vagliano. The Vagliano brothers pioneered the transition of Greek-owned shipping from sail to steam. They were prime movers in adopting steamships, launching an unprecedented programme of new ship building in British yards in the late 1870s to early 1880s.

From 1946 to 1975, Aristotle Onassis consolidated his position as a charismatic shipping tycoon and international businessman. During this period, he pioneered what would become the basic structure of the global shipping group. Between 1946 and 1975, he purchased 140 vessels of about 3.7 million grt and received more than two hundred and fifty million dollars of finance (in current prices) for these purchases from American banks. This chapter analyzes how he built his shipping business Empire, examining his sale and purchase (S&P) methods and showing how he constructed his fleet by gathering capital resources, and how he managed his resources and exploited the choices given. Onassis confronted both opportunity and crisis as he built his fleet from Liberty ships, and tankers despite the lack of any support from the Greek shipping milieu to whom he channelled his anger through a long memorandum called the Onassiad”. He expanded his business Empire through various conflicts. His most notorious venture in oil was through an agreement with Saudi Arabia that brought him into direct confrontation with the oil majors, the US government and the European and American shipping world.

Aristotle Onassis was among the first in the shipping business to take advantage of global sourcing, and was instrumental in creating the global shipping business that reinvented the European maritime tradition. He was a prime mover after World War II exclusively in instituting offshore companies, with their flags of convenience, in the rapidly globalizing shipping industry. In the 1950s it was mainly the Greeks that used them; today two thirds of the world fleet flies a flag of convenience. In this way Onassis was a pioneer global entrepreneur. He conducted his business in the 1940s in ways that anticipated modern business practices, not least its globalization. Onassis innovated on four levels. First, he pioneered the modern model of ownership and management of global shipping companies, based on offshore companies, flags of convenience, and multiple holding companies. Second, he was the one to first open the United States financial markets to ship finance. Third, by building tankers in American, European and Asian shipyards, he contributed to the evolution of ship technology and gigantism. And fourth, he reinvented Greek island maritime culture into a corporate shipping culture.