Maria Angelicoussis, the Greek shipping magnate worth $13.5 billion, has seen her family office Nicrone reap substantial paper gains from a concentrated bet on Nvidia Corp. as the chipmaker's shares more than quadrupled over the past three years. The move marks a deliberate pivot from private markets into public equities for the Athens-based dynasty, whose fortune was built on oil tankers and bulk carriers.
The shift to public markets
Nicrone was established four years ago with more than $1 billion in assets, seeded with proceeds from the sale of a public-equity portfolio that Angelicoussis's father, John, had assembled over three decades. John Angelicoussis, who died in 2021, favored US stocks such as Apple Inc. The family liquidated that portfolio during the pandemic, then rebuilt a public-markets operation under Laura Lavers, a former hedge fund executive who has run Nicrone's UK branch since 2023. Ben Goldsmith joined last year as head of public capital from Zeno Equity Partners, a London stock-picking firm focused on long-term holdings.
The Nvidia position
Nvidia has ranked among Nicrone's largest listed holdings during that period, according to people familiar with the matter. The exact stake size and unrealized gain are not disclosed; Nicrone does not file 13F reports. But the timing aligns: Nvidia's share price has risen more than fourfold since Lavers took the UK reins three years ago, placing the family office among a cohort of ultra-wealthy investors who captured the bulk of the AI-driven rally.
Peers follow similar path
Registry filings through June show more than a dozen other family offices with disclosed Nvidia positions, including those for Sweden's Rausing dynasty and hedge fund founders David Tepper and George Soros. The average stake among them was nearly $200 million, typically representing about 4 percent of their US equity allocations. A UBS survey of 307 family offices overseeing $1.3 billion on average found developed-market equities now constitute roughly a third of their portfolios, the largest single allocation.
What to watch
Other shipping dynasties are building similar structures. Two branches of Germany's Oldendorff family have established family offices in the past decade, spanning operations in Germany and the UK. For the Angelicoussis group, the question is whether the public-markets engine can sustain the compounding that shipping cycles delivered during the supply-chain disruption and the recent US-Iran conflict, or whether the Nvidia concentration becomes a single-stock risk the family's maritime roots taught them to avoid.