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With the Creole (which he sailed in last month's Torquay-Lisbon race) and his "little boat," the 103-ft. auxiliary schooner Eros, Niarchos has cruised effortlessly into international society. He has become a patron of the arts (he paid $300,000 for El Greco's Pieta) and the sport of kings (his 18-horse stable includes Nashua's dam, Segula). A lover of good food and wine, he has been known to explain to dallying guests, as he heads for the dining room: "My cook doesn't like to be kept waiting." He likes to dance and gossip,-"gives or attends at least five parties a week in London or Paris. Largely to accommodate his friends, Niarchos maintains a Long Island estate, a duplex apartment in Manhattan, town houses in Paris and Athens, a London penthouse at Claridge's once occupied by Sir Winston Churchill, a four-story, $575,000 Cap d'Antibes chateau that has sheltered such royal refugees as the Duke of Windsor and Belgium's ex-King Leopold. Recently, he bought "Blue Horizons," one of Bermuda's most elegant abodes.
The Critical 40%. But Niarchos never lets the pleasures of his wealth interfere with his passion for his ships. To handle the day-to-day operations of his empire, Niarchos has recruited some of the world's top shipping brains. His 120-man London staff, quartered in two Georgian mansions in Mayfair, is headed by Reginald John ("Square Rig") Dodds, onetime tanker boss for Shell Tankers, Ltd. which is one of Niarchos' best customers. His Manhattan office is run by Financial Expert Walter Saunders, onetime vice president of Metropolitan Life Insurance Co., which is one of Niarchos' heaviest backers. Says Niarchos: "My staff makes 60% of the decisions. I make 40%." But his 40% is in the critical area of policy.
Niarchos spends little time at any of his nine offices from Hamburg to San Pedro, transacts top-level business with bankers and charterers (in fluent French or English) over leisurely luncheons at quietly opulent restaurants such as Manhattan's Chambord and London's Mirabelle. Wherever he goes, he is dogged by daily packets containing interoffice memos and notes from his staff. When he wants to discuss a project with an associate, Niarchos summons the man to his side, once kept staffers shuttling to and from Switzerland for three months while he recovered from a skiing accident.
Niarchos' routine, as a London associate observed, "is that he has no routine." However, summer usually finds him aboard the Creole, winter on the ski slopes of St. Moritz (where the toughest descent is labeled NIARCHOS RUN). In June, the menage gravitates to London for the social season. Twice in the past four years they have come to the U.S. so that his attractive young wife, Eugenie Niarchos, 26, could bear two native American sons.