Issue No. 13376

 

BUSINESSMAN Petros Kyriakides outlined his plans for the NEP-Kyriakides Publishing group and his other enterprises at a New Year’s pita cutting held in Egli Hall at Athens’ Zappeio on February 3. 

 

“We entered the media with the aim of offering something to the development of this country. We managed to acquire media that were in decline and to get them growing within a matter of months,” Kyriakides told an audience of more than 1,000 employees from his media, publishing and other companies. 

 

Within a little over a year, Kyriakides amassed a still growing array of media, including the weekly Sfina, the Athens News, the daily tabloid Espresso, the financial daily Isotimia and various periodicals, including L’Officiel and Free. In the area of electronic media, he has acquired Flash 96 radio, TV Channel 10 and Sport TV. 

 

Kyriakides expressed pride that his company has become a source of media growth and job creation at a time of mounting economic difficulty, when layoffs and newspaper shutdowns are the order of day.

 

“My aim is to expand the group so as to create jobs, as it is well known how high unemployment rates are, both at the European and the international level. Our basic priority is for the people who are with us to work and receive a dignified salary.”

 

“I am not a parachutist that came out of nowhere,” Kyriakides said. “I have been involved in publishing since my university days when, with my fellow student Yiorgos Vergados, we published the Pamfititiki [literally “all university students” publication] of the law school. At the same time, we published books and periodicals. I was also editor-in-chief of the magazine Nea Patrida, the biggest magazine on Cyprus, which I printed in Athens and shipped to Cyprus.”

 

The publishing branch of NEP, he said, has featured distinguished university and academic titles. It owns four publishing companies and eight bookstores. Kyriakides said he is currently interested in acquiring one of Greece’s most significant publishing companies, but did not reveal which. 

 

He underlined his abiding interest over four decades in organic products and expressed the conviction that organic foods will eventually be cheaper than those that are conventionally produced. 

 

“I want as many people as possible to have clean food, free of poisons, and to help Greece’s environment in this way. My aim over the coming years is for organic products to become cheaper than conventional ones, to root out price gouging and to develop technology for the cultivation of organic products,” Kyriakides said, noting that this interest also dates from his university years. 

 

He said he plans to open a supermarket within three months, on Alimou Avenue, where new jobs will be created. 

 

“That is what I studied when I received a scholarship to do graduate work in Germany, in the area of industrial production, in 1974.”

 

Speaking of his past, Kyriakides painted a picture of a rags-to-riches entrepreneur. “God allowed me to be with you today,” he said after a blessing by two priests. “I do not come from the elite or a rich family. I am a refugee, and indeed twice a refugee. From both Asia Minor [which his family left after the Asia Minor catastrophe] and from Cyprus [after the 1974 Turkish invasion]. I am grateful to my country, Greece, and I thank all the Greeks that offered their support.”

 

NEP board members Michalis Kyriakides and Areti Sidirokastritou, along with Sport TV and Isotimia owner Yiorgos Kyriakides, helped cut the pita, with NEP’s director Yiorgos Souvatzis winning the lucky gold sovereign. Kyriakides handed out dozens of prizes in an employee lottery, including trips abroad and in Greece, gift certificates, books and 10 gold sovereigns.

 

 

ATHENS NEWS 30/08/2010, page: 20