The Man Who Bought the Bank

Aristotle Socrates Onassis is a Greek-born Argentine who water-skis in the best international circles and includes among his friends Prince Rainier III, Pooh-Bah of the tiny principality of Monaco and its famed Monte Carlo Casino. At 47, Onassis has homes in Paris, New York, Montevideo and Antibes, owns or controls a fleet of 91 tankers, freighters and whaling ships worth an estimated $300 million, and has a pretty 23-year-old wife. But he didn't get all this by breaking the bank at Monte Carlo--quite the opposite. Last week "Ari" Onassis let it be known that, for $1,000,000, he had bought the 75-year-old Casino, lock, stock and roulette table, and with it, the purse strings of Monaco.

Reason: he needed some office space.

As top man in nearly 30 shipping companies* under five different flags, Onassis already has headquarters in Montevideo, branch offices in Paris, London, New York, Hamburg and Panama. But since much of his tanker business is bringing oil from the Middle East through the Mediterranean to Northern Europe, he thought he should have offices near the Mediterranean ports of Marseille and Genoa, where many of his ships are repaired. To Onassis, some empty buildings he had seen on a visit to Monaco looked ideal. A year ago, he approached Monaco's Societe des Bains de Mer et Cercle des Strangers (Sea Bathing Society and Foreigners Club) which controls most Monacan real estate, along with the Monte Carlo Casino. Would they rent him a building? They would not.

Craps & Hand Grenades. But as soon as Onassis called on his old friend, Prince Rainier, the atmosphere became more friendly. The Casino, once the gathering place of rich royalty and the royally rich, had fallen on bad times. Gone were the days when Alexandra, Czarina of all the Russias, could bring the entire corps of the Imperial Ballet to dance while she gambled, when a Casino patron could toss a hand grenade into the roulette wheel after losing his wad and scarcely raise a commotion. Currency restrictions had cut the once-rich British trade to a trickle; the recently installed crap tables (TIME, Feb. 28, 1949), having failed to attract Americans in any quantities, were merely confusing the other customers, who stood around in baffled silence as the croupiers intoned such unfamiliar phrases as "I'm so hot I won't need a blanket tonight." In recent years, the Casino had lost money, and Prince Rainier, who gets 10% of the take in profitable years, was looking for some $1,000,000 in new capital. Three of the Casino's directors were out lining up money, when Onassis hove into sight.

Onassis lunched with the Prince several times, made himself useful around the palace to the extent of finding a 137-ft. diesel yacht for Monaco's boss. "People said I gave him a yacht," said Onassis. "Poof! He paid for it, 51 million francs, about $125,000." In any case, the Prince decided to drop his money-raising scheme. Instead, he approved Onassis' plan to buy control of the Sea Bathing Society from its 31,000 stockholders. When the directors returned from their money chase to tell the Prince that four of the biggest banks in France had agreed to put up the money, they found that the Prince's palace gates, guarded by royal carabinieri in blue tunics and scarlet collars, were closed to them. In a huff, the three resigned to make room for Onassis' representatives.

Grain & Tankers. The man who bought the bank at Monte Carlo started off as a D.P. from Smyrna after the Turks overran the city in 1922 and killed his father and other members of his family. Onassis had enough cash to buy passage for Argentina, where immigration restrictions were few. He worked for seven years as a tobacco importing agent, piled up about $180,000; in 1930, with his Greek citizenship restored, he became Greek consul general, at the age of 24, in Buenos Aires. Onassis supervised the comings & goings of Greek grain vessels, soon decided that his future lay in shipping. In the depths of the Depression, when old mariners were abandoning ship, Onassis climbed aboard. He took his savings and bought six Canadian freighters that had cost $12 million to build only a few years before.

For a while, Onassis' shipping company ran in the red. But by 1936 he was making enough money to order a 15,000-ton tanker built for him in Sweden, thus became, he claims, the first Greek shipowner to get into oil transport. During the war, with most of his ships impounded in Sweden, he ran the rest of them for the Allies. At war's end, when Bethlehem Steel planned to close its Sparrows Point, Md. shipyard, Onassis came through with the first postwar order for tankers in the U.S., and persuaded the company to keep its shipyard going. The order was for six 28,000-ton tankers, at a total cost of $34 million.

Onassis is still expanding fast, has 23 more tankers on order (for $130 million) all over the world, including a 45,000-tonner at Hamburg. By next year, he will control 1,250,000 tons v. 750,000 now.

Onassis plans to move a staff of ioc into Monaco's Old Sporting Club building when it is remodeled next summer. He sees only one drawback to linking up with the Monte Carlo Casino, whose operations he will merely supervise from a distance. Says he: "We like to have good businessmen on our board. They don't want to be associated with a dying gambling joint." Most of Onassis' ships are now registered in Panama. Though he insists that he has no plans to switch them to the Monegasque flag, he admits that some of his new ships now on order will be registered in Monaco. Says he: "If I do that, others will want to come in, and there will be a little fleet."

* Among his biggest: Olympic Oil Lines, A.S. Onassis, Ltd., Olympic Maritime, A.G., Panama Maritime, S.A., South Atlantic Marine, S.A.

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