Businessman, sports club owner Pavlos Giannakopoulos dies
Pavlos Giannakopoulos, the founder of Greek pharmaceutical firm Vianex and co-owner of the capital’s Panathinaikos basketball club from 1987 to 2012, died on Sunday morning. He was 89 years old.
Pavlos Giannakopoulos’s death comes just a month after that of his brother, Costas, with whom he ran the company and the sports club before both was passed down to Pavlos’s son, Dimitris Giannakopoulos, who is deputy CEO of Vianex.
“The Vianex family bids a humble farewell to its founder and president with deep sorrow and inexpressible pain,” the company said in an announcement on Sunday, adding that the company’s flags would fly at half-mast until after Giannakopoulos’s funeral on June 10.
“Pavlos Giannakopoulos may longer be with us, but all the great things he created and all the people he benefited are here to remember him forever,” the company said.
Panathinaikos BC hailed Giannakopoulos as a force who “changed the course of history in Greek basketball and Greek sports.”
Under the brothers’ leadership, Panathinaikos raised the cup in six Euroleague championships and took the title in 13 Greek Basketball League championships.
