The apparent suicide of Kyriakos Mamidakis, the founder of a leading Greek fuel supplier, has sent shockwaves through an Athens business community already reeling from the collapse of several large companies that were local household names.
Mamidakis, 84, died from a single gunshot wound to the head, two days after Mamidoil-Jetoil, his family-owned group, filed for bankruptcy. He was found in the study of his Athens home on Sunday afternoon. Police said they were treating the death as suicide.
A pillar of Greece’s business community, Mamidakis and his two brothers built a small chain of petrol stations into an international fuel trading business covering Greece and the neighbouring Balkan countries. He was still managing the business before his death.
Greece’s seven-year recession has taken a heavy toll on small businesses, with thousands collapsing after running out of cash. The latest wave of bankruptcies has shaken more established enterprises, like Mamidoil-Jetoil. It has been prompted by local banks tackling a mountain of non-performing loans equal to more than 50 per cent of their total exposure. They have done so under pressure from Greece’s international creditors.
“Greek corporates are struggling . . . The sense is that a lot of companies managed to hold on in the hope of a better future but it’s clear that the economy’s not recovering,” said Kyriakos Mitsotakis, leader of the opposition centre-right New Democracy party.
Mamidoil-Jetoil used to be Greece’s third-largest supplier of petroleum products, controlling a chain of 600 petrol stations and sizeable storage facilities outside the northern city of Thessaloniki that became a base for exports to the Balkans countries. The group’s subsidiaries include a shipping fleet, several luxury hotels, a winery and an olive oil producer.
But the company was hit hard by a sharp fall in consumption of petrol and heating fuel in Greece as successive governments raised fuel taxes to meet revenue targets set by the country’s international creditors — the EU, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund.
According to a court filing, Mamidoil-Jetoil owes €270m to banks and suppliers, another €8m in unpaid social security contributions and €1m in unpaid salaries to the company’s 160 employees.
Other big companies that have filed for protection from creditors in the past two months include Marinopoulos group, a leading supermarket chain and the former Greek partner of Carrefour; Ilektroniki, an electrical goods supplier; Pyrsos, a security company; and the five-star Athens Ledra hotel, owned by the Cyprus-based Paraskevaides group.
Greece last month completed the first review of its €86bn third bailout, receiving a €7.5bn aid payment . But the economy is still stuck in recession with output projected to shrink another 0.3 per cent this year before recovering in 2017.
Some analysts say a nexus of relationships between Greek politicians, company owners and bankers allowed many large companies to continue operating — thus protecting thousands of jobs — even though they could no longer be considered viable enterprises.
“If previous governments had acted sooner to ensure that the banks began cleaning up non-performing loans, perhaps some of these events could have been avoided,” said Miranda Xafa, a researcher at the Centre for International Governance Innovation.
Greek foot-dragging over passing new legislation to allow banks to replace managers of failing companies also contributed to the pile-up of bad debt, Ms Xafa argued. The law only passed in May as one of scores of conditions for releasing Greece’s latest slice of bailout aid.
The collapse of Marinopoulos, with debts of €1.3bn, is Greece’s largest bankruptcy to date. It has alarmed officials in the leftwing Syriza-led government because of the potential knock-on effects for the struggling economy.
The group is one of Greece’s largest employers, with 12,500 workers and 2,000 suppliers, including many small local producers who may also face bankruptcy.
Meanwhile, on Mr Mamidakis’s native island of Crete, Emmanuel Panayiotakis and other former Jetoil employees remembered him a favourite son. “He built a big international business with his brothers but they never forgot they came from a very small village,” Mr Panayiotakis said.