Maria Angelicoussis, the magnate behind Greece’s largest shipping fortune, has recorded significant gains outside her shipping empire through a bet on technology giant Nvidia Corp., as her family office moved away from private (i.e. non-stock-market) markets.
Nicrone, the investment firm of the billionaire owner of Angelicoussis Group, has made a strategic investment in the listed artificial intelligence chipmaker in recent years, as part of a shift toward listed companies under the leadership of former hedge fund executive Laura Lavers, according to Bloomberg sources.
Nvidia is among Nicrone’s top holdings in listed companies as part of this shift under Lavers, the same sources added, asking not to be identified because the details are private. The company, which does not disclose its equity investments, was founded four years ago with assets exceeding $1 billion.
Although it was not possible to determine the exact size of the stake and the current profit, Nvidia’s share price has more than quadrupled since Lavers took over as head of the British arm of the family office three years ago.
A representative for Angelicoussis, 44, chief executive officer of her namesake business, declined to comment, while a representative for Nicrone did not respond to requests for comment. Her fortune stands at about $13.5 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Nicrone’s bet on Nvidia provides a picture of how the Angelicoussis family is diversifying its wealth, after several exceptionally profitable years of rising freight rates, in the wake of global supply chain disruptions, including the Covid-19 pandemic, as well as this year’s conflict between the US and Iran.
Investments in public markets were an area favored by Maria’s father, John, who died in 2021 and led the family business for more than three decades. He invested the proceeds from the Athens-based shipping company, which Maria’s grandfather had founded nearly a century earlier, in American stocks such as Apple Inc.
The portfolio was sold during the pandemic and the proceeds were used to create Nicrone, which recently sought to hire investment staff aimed at “long-term value creation” from listed equities.
More than a dozen other family offices that disclose their holdings in US stocks held stakes in Nvidia at the end of June, including those of the Swedish Rausing dynasty, as well as hedge fund founders David Tepper and George Soros, according to an analysis of registry filings by Bloomberg. The average size of their Nvidia holdings was nearly $200 million, typically representing about 4% of their US stock positions.