Shipping That's Not All In The Family

In the U.S., children grow up wanting to be pro basketball players; in Europe, star footballers. But Evangelos J. Pistiolis is Greek, so he dreamed of running his own shipping company. "I liked shipping the way [Salvador] Dalí liked painting," he quips. So Pistiolis enrolled at Britain's Southampton Institute of Higher Education, earning a masters in shipping operations. Then he put in a two-year stint with the Greek navy. By the time he was 27, in 2000, Pistiolis had bought his first ship with help from his father, a wealthy contractor. Last July he took his company, TOP Tankers Inc. (TOPT ), public on the NASDAQ, raising more than $146 million.

Forget about Aristotle Onassis and Stavros Niarchos -- there's a new generation of Greek shipping tycoons in the making. Besides Pistiolis, it includes Nikolas P. Tsakos, 42, of Tsakos Energy Navigation Ltd. (TNP ); Victor S. Restis, 36, of Restis Group; and Angeliki Frangou, 40, of International Shipping Enterprises. These guys are just as comfortable around balance sheets as they are around ballast tanks. They hold degrees from foreign universities and sprinkle their conversations with Wall Street lingo, such as return on capital. Pistiolis' crowd generally keeps a low profile. Just about the only Greek shipping scion making headlines these days is Paris Latsis -- and that's only because the 27-year-old heir to a reported $7.5 billion shipping fortune is engaged to hotel heiress Paris Hilton. "The new generation of shipowners are better-educated and better-trained than Onassis and Niarchos were when they got started," says Nicholas Gage, author of Greek Fire, a biography of Onassis. "And they are running their companies on more sound business practices while seizing the opportunities the current shipping boom is providing."