Piraeus, opposite the ferry terminal where he’d built much of his fortune. Centered on a hook-shaped peninsula extending southwest from central Athens, the city of 160,000 is the undisputed center of Greece’s shipping industry. Along its densely packed commercial blocks are the offices of virtually every one of the country’s maritime tycoons. That, in turn, makes Piraeus the ship-owning capital of the world. Roughly 18 percent of the worldwide merchant fleet is Greek owned, a volume wildly out of proportion to the country’s overall economy, which is barely among the twenty largest in Europe.
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