Aristotle Onassis was the quintessence of a twentieth century shipping tycoon. Mostly known for his life style and his marriage to Jacqueline Kennedy, Onassis in fact was a pioneer in the making to the global shipping firm in the post-WWII period. On January 1, 2000, Lloyd's List published a leading article titled “Giants who changed the face of shipping;” not surprisingly, the biggest picture, in the middle of the photo spread, featured Aristotle Onassis. He 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. The choices he made were much talked about, and often harshly criticized. He chose to build his global shipping empire around offshore companies and flags of convenience. His choices in the 1940s and 1950s were new and unusual, but today they have become common practice in the global shipping business.
Onassis was a major figure in the newly globalized era of shipping practices. He was able to establish the new institution of the global shipping company, a kind of multinational company, that was based in many countries and used Panamanian and Liberian companies and many different flags, all of which meant that it was taxed under the law of these countries. This paper will reveal the architecture of his global shipping empire and indicate the model of the global shipping firm followed ever since.
The paper is based on the Onassis Business Archive, used for the first time for academic research and my last book Creating Global Shipping: Aristotle Onassis, the Vagliano Brothers and the Business of Shipping, c.1820-1970, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2019.