THE EAGERLY AWAITED GREEK RICH LIST 2011/2012 IS OFFICIALLY RELEASED PROFILING MORE THAN 300 OF THE WORLD’S GREEK AND GREEK CYPRIOT MILLIONAIRES ACROSS FOUR CONTINENTS
The Greek Rich List (GRL) is the official publication profiling the worlds wealthiest Greeks. It now sits alongside other World Rich Lists including The Sunday Times (UK), Manager Magazin (Germany), Business Review Weekly (Australia), Sunday Times (South Africa), Bilan/Bilanz (Switzerland) and Forbes World Billionaires to name a few.
The new 2011/12 GRL profiles over 300 Greek and Greek Cypriots from 13 different countries around the world. Profiles are divided into 5 main regions: Australia, Cyprus, Greece, UK and USA with an additional ‘Rest of the World’ section. This year, for the first time, GRL features a wealth index combining the total value of each region and converting it to Euros, offering a complete list in descending order in one currency nomination.
The combined wealth of all the billionaires and millionaires profiled is just over €52 billion with 49 new entries. The UK section includes one new entry launched straight in at no.11 with a valuation of £210million. The most notable new entry comes in the USA section where a former homeless person went on to become a billionaire businessman and philanthropist, currently valued by Forbes at $4 billion.
Savvas Pavlou is the creator of GRL and director of Honeystone Ltd which publishes the prestigious title; he has been involved in Rich List’s since 2004.
“When I met Philip Beresford, editor of the Sunday Times Rich List, at the launch of the Asian Rich List in the UK several years ago, I asked if he would consider compiling a Greek Rich List. Philip has been compiling Rich List’s for over 23 years and is considered a rich list guru – he is instrumental in helping compile our UK section and also helps with the other world profiles.
When producing the first World Greek Rich List we had to find credible journalists, publishers and researchers that could create profiles for their region. With the help of these partners, mainly Economia Business Media (Greece), Financial Mirror (Cyprus) and other rich list publishers, we managed to put together the first world edition in 2009/10. It’s now the fourth edition of GRL; we first started with the top 50 in the UK and have expanded and increased our profiles with each new edition. It continues to get bigger and better.
Research is continuous. One day after this edition went to print we discovered a New Zealand millionaire, George Frazis. He commands a salary package of $5.59 million… we just can’t keep up with new data coming in every day. The publication is now biennial and we are already compiling and updating our data and looking for sponsors of the 2013/14 issue. As a brand it is expanding rapidly, so much so that together with US International consulting firm IAC, the first ever ‘Greek Power Summit’ is to be held in Athens on June 14-15, 2011 with business leader Steve Forbes (CEO Forbes Media, USA) and Nana Mouskouri attending the high profile event. GRL is also involved with IAC in bringing ‘Dragons’ Den (or Shark Tank as it is known in the US) to Greece and Cyprus in the near future… watch this space!”
Each section in GRL has its own methodology in arriving at the given valuations; the majority are based on the share prices of quoted companies, latest accounts from companies house, levels of borrowing, family trusts, electronic libraries, and many other publically available sources. However, in the case of the Greece and Cyprus sections, the cross-holdings between companies, limited exposure to publicly held stocks, private companies with intertwined shareholders and ‘holding’ companies, and the absence of a culture to declare one’s interest, makes it very difficult to compile. Furthermore, the fact that many also have overseas interests with their companies filing tax returns in other countries makes it difficult to complete an individual’s wealth profile. In other cases, our compilers rely on publicly available or credible reported information, and in some cases found comparisons to peers within the same field of business.
In all cases, the wealth listed in GRL has been valued conservatively taking into consideration the risks involved with each sector and the information available at the time. We believe it is a fair representation of the (currently) wealthiest Greeks and Greek Cypriots across the world.
You can purchase the magazine directly from the GRL website www.greekrichlist.com, large bookshops, 5-star hotels and also made available in Athens, Larnaca and Paphos airports.
