Michalis Georgios Sallas (

Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...

: Μιχάλης Γεωργίος Σάλλας; born 1950) is a Greek businessman, banker and academic, who has been Chairman of

Piraeus Bank Piraeus Bank () is a Greece, Greek multinational financial services company with its headquarters in Athens, Greece. Piraeus Bank's shares have been listed on the Athens Exchange, Athens Stock Exchange (Athens Exchange, ATHEX) since January 1918. ...

(today Greece's largest) from 1991, to 2016. The Piraeus Group is the parent company of a large financial organisation in Greece, with important subsidiary companies in Greece and many subsidiary banks abroad. Sallas is regarded as one of the most powerful tycoons in the Greek economy.Marketzone
defunct website; last

Wayback Machine The Wayback Machine is a digital archive of the World Wide Web founded by Internet Archive, an American nonprofit organization based in San Francisco, California. Launched for public access in 2001, the service allows users to go "back in ...

capture Feb. 8, 2014)

Early life and education

Sallas is a

Cretan Crete ( ; , Modern Greek, Modern: , Ancient Greek, Ancient: ) is the largest and most populous of the Greek islands, the List of islands by area, 88th largest island in the world and the List of islands in the Mediterranean#By area, fifth la ...

; he was born in

Heraklion Heraklion or Herakleion ( ; , , ), sometimes Iraklion, is the largest city and the administrative capital city, capital of the island of Crete and capital of Heraklion (regional unit), Heraklion regional unit. It is the fourth largest city in G ...

in 1950. He graduated from the

University of Athens The National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (NKUA; , ''Ethnikó kai Kapodistriakó Panepistímio Athinón''), usually referred to simply as the University of Athens (UoA), is a public university in Athens, Greece, with various campuses alo ...

with a degree in

economics Economics () is a behavioral science that studies the Production (economics), production, distribution (economics), distribution, and Consumption (economics), consumption of goods and services. Economics focuses on the behaviour and interac ...

, and did postgraduate studies in

Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...

(then

West Germany West Germany was the common English name for the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) from its formation on 23 May 1949 until German reunification, its reunification with East Germany on 3 October 1990. It is sometimes known as the Bonn Republi ...

), obtaining a

PhD A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of graduate study and original research. The name of the deg ...

in economics and statistics from the

University of Heidelberg Heidelberg University, officially the Ruprecht Karl University of Heidelberg (; ), is a public university, public research university in Heidelberg, Baden-Württemberg, Germany. Founded in 1386 on instruction of Pope Urban VI, Heidelberg is List ...

Career

He began his academic career in Germany, as a researcher in Heidelberg University's ''Institute of International Comparative Statistics''. He has also taught economics and

econometrics Econometrics is an application of statistical methods to economic data in order to give empirical content to economic relationships. M. Hashem Pesaran (1987). "Econometrics", '' The New Palgrave: A Dictionary of Economics'', v. 2, p. 8 p. 8 ...

at the University of Athens and at

Panteion University The Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences (PUSPS; , ΠΠΚΠΕ), usually referred to simply as the Panteion University (Πάντειο Πανεπιστήμιο), is a university located in Athens, Greece. Founded in 1927, it is the ...

.Περιοδικό NITRO, Απρίλιος 1999 Sallas was actively involved in politics as a supporter of

Andreas Papandreou Andreas Georgiou Papandreou (, ; 5 February 1919 – 23 June 1996) was a Greek academic and economist who founded the Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK) and served three terms as Prime minister of Greece, prime minister of Third Hellenic Repu ...

, a socialist politician who served for many years as Greece's Prime Minister; in 1974, Sallas was a founding member of

PASOK The Panhellenic Socialist Movement (, ), known mostly by its acronym PASOK (; , ), is a social democracy, social-democratic List of political parties in Greece, political party in Greece. Until 2012 it was Two-party system, one of the two major ...

, Papandreou's party. In successive Papandreou governments, he served as General Secretary of the Ministry of Commerce, Governor of the Hellenic Industrial Development Bank, economic advisor to the Prime Minister and chairman of the committee for the modernization of the Greek banking system, among other positions. Sallas became Chairman of

after the right-wing government of the conservative

New Democracy New Democracy, or the New Democratic Revolution, is a type of democracy in Marxism, based on Mao Zedong's Bloc of Four Social Classes theory in post-revolutionary China which argued originally that democracy in China would take a path that w ...

party decided to privatize it in 1991. He persuaded a group of powerful businessmen to buy the bank and appoint him its chairman; since that time, Piraeus Bank has expanded aggressively, both in Greece and internationally, and today is Greece's 4th largest bank.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Sallas, Michalis 1950 births Greek bankers Athens University of Economics and Business alumni Living people Businesspeople from Heraklion