The world's first oil super-tankers, The Aristo and The Aristofaneus, each capable of carrying a 15,000-ton cargo, exemplified the scale and ambition that characterised the man. But business wasn't all about simply making a profit. "After a certain point money is meaningless," he once said. "It ceases to be the goal - the game is what counts."
The opportunity that was to make him one of the world's richest men was yet to come, however. When World War II ended and the United States decided to sell off 16 of the ships it had built during the conflict, Aristotle - taking a risk that shocked the business world - agreed contracts to transport coal in South America, France and Germany using vessels he did not yet own. He then used the contracts to secure a bank loan in order to purchase the ships.
Determined and aggressive business practices such as this continued to attract attention, and his reputation was badly damaged when the Peruvian government jailed 400 of his sailors and seized five of his ships for illegal whaling. He then moved into the air transport business, founding Greece's Olympic Airways in 1957. But the spectacular successes of the past were behind him, and in 1973 his life was struck by a tragedy from which he would never fully recover when his only son Alexander was killed in a plane crash. Aristotle died two years later.
){kind=link}