Margarita Olegovna Louis-Dreyfus. This is the first name that stands out in the shareholder structure of the company Leonidsport, which submitted a public offer for 21% of the shares of the Thessaloniki Port Authority (OLT). She is the widow of Robert Louis-Dreyfus and head of the French giant Louis-Dreyfus, one of the most powerful conglomerates on the planet.

“Tsarina,” is the nickname used for her by the French and American press due to her Russian origins, even though she does not come from a noble family or ultra-wealthy oligarchs from Russia, as one might imagine. The fourth wealthiest woman in Europe and one of the wealthiest in the world today, with a fortune exceeding 5 billion euros, the woman who controls global agricultural product trade and has powerful businesses in every sector of the economy one can think of, was once a poor orphan from the Soviet Union, educated thanks to the sacrifices of her grandfather.

From Leningrad to the top of the world

Her grandfather, Leonid Bogdanov, also raised her after her parents were killed in a train accident in 1969, when Margarita was just 7 years old. Bogdanov believed that the greatest wealth he could give Margarita was education and did everything he could to provide it. After graduating from school, she left Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) and studied law at Moscow State University. Immediately after, she pursued a master’s degree at the Institute of Soviet Trade in Leningrad, where she obtained degrees in economics.

After completing her studies, Margarita left the Soviet Union, where opportunities were limited. Armed with her high educational level, sharp mind, and impressive appearance, she secured a job as a salesperson at the German microchip and electronics company Laytron AG.

Her grandfather, Leonid, whose name was given— as one can easily guess— to the company that is “entering” OLT, lived to see his beloved granddaughter “settled,” with a good job and prospects. Not family-wise, though, since in the mid-1980s Margarita married a Swiss student, with whom she divorced a year later. However, he did not live to see her become a powerful woman, as he passed away in 1985.

In 1988, Margarita was on a flight from Zurich to London. Fate had her sitting next to Robert Louis-Dreyfus, the French businessman with an MBA from Harvard, who was constantly “in the air” because he managed the companies of the commercial giant founded by his great-grandfather in 1851. Margarita didn’t know this when she asked him what time it was. Nor did she know when they “clicked,” because, aside from telling her the time, he showed her a picture of his fluffy British shepherd dog (Bobtail) to attract the attention of the striking blonde sitting next to him. Something he succeeded at, as well as getting her phone number.

A few days later, Robert called Margarita, asking her to translate a document into Russian. “You know, you could have asked me to go out to dinner without needing any translation,” she responded. “Alright,” he murmured, and their love story inevitably led to their marriage in 1992.

After the marriage, Margarita acquired Swiss citizenship and became a full-time mother, caring for the three children she had with Robert: Eric and the twin boys, Kiril and Maurice. Meanwhile, Robert Louis-Dreyfus had created a new business empire without using a single cent from the conglomerate he was about to inherit—he was not involved in it anyway. He had made a fortune from poker (!) and was about to build an even greater fortune by rescuing failing businesses like the sports giant Adidas and the advertising firm Saatchi & Saatchi.

Among the dozens of companies he managed in Europe, Australia, Asia, and the Americas, he became more and more involved in sports. In 1996, he made headlines by purchasing the historic French football club Marseille (Olympique de Marseille).

His joy at becoming involved in European professional football would not last long. A year later, he was diagnosed with leukemia. The disease was very aggressive, and as his battle became more intense, he gradually entrusted Margarita with more and more responsibilities. In 2000, he returned to the family agricultural giant, the Louis-Dreyfus Group, which his great-grandfather had founded in 1851.

In 2008, he founded Akira Holding to transfer 61% of Louis-Dreyfus, which he would gather, to her. Robert sensed that his end was near and anticipated what could happen to other giants: The board might “throw out” his wife to take control and transfer the company to another conglomerate.

Thus, in 2008, he locked the shares for 99 years and appointed Margarita as the family trustee, ensuring that the aforementioned scenario could not happen. When he died in July 2009, at the age of 63, he left her in the strongest position on the three-member board, overseeing the largest share of the company, headquartered in Amsterdam, the third-largest agricultural products company in the world.

But Margarita, after her husband’s death, did everything she could to fulfill his last wish, as he expressed it to her shortly before he passed away. “Do what I did. Maintain and grow the company to pass it on to our heirs,” their children.

The new life

It wasn’t an easy task. Yes, Robert had “locked” the shares so that no other shareholders or members could remove her from the board, but Margarita had to fight to earn respect, not just in the business world but even in the companies she controlled. “It’s a man’s world, and most of the time, men don’t take women seriously,” she said in an interview with Bloomberg, speaking about her business career.

Margarita didn’t settle for the (more than comfortable) life of being the widow and heir of one of the wealthiest people in the world. She took action as president of Louis-Dreyfus companies and also Marseille, where she recently managed to fend off an aggressive takeover attempt by Saudi Prince Al-Waleed. And she made remarkable changes in the group. She sold the energy trading company and acquired more shares in Louis-Dreyfus, strengthening her position in it.

At the same time, she was “building” the future for her three sons. She sent the twins to a school in Singapore “to expose them to new cultures and broaden their horizons,” as she said in an interview, while Eric studied in the USA and began his career as an intern at another commodity giant, Glencore, to gain the necessary experience.

Margarita never stayed in the shadows. She earned the prestige and respect of the most powerful business circles on the planet and… inevitably began mingling with Europe’s elite. In the stands of the Stade Vélodrome (the home of Olympique Marseille), she was often photographed with French Presidents, such as Nicolas Sarkozy and the now-powerful head of the ECB, Christine Lagarde.

From 2013 onward, in these photos, she would often appear with the former head of the Swiss National Bank and later vice-president of BlackRock, Philippe Hildebrandt. Their joint appearances would become the subject of discussion since, that year, Hildebrandt would divorce his wife, Kasia, after becoming involved in a trading scandal. This scandal also cost Hildebrandt his job, as Kasia is said to have made a significant profit with insider information about Switzerland’s monetary policy.

Although there isn’t much information about Margarita Louis-Dreyfus’ personal life, in 2021, Louis Dreyfus Group confirmed journalistic reports that Margarita gave birth to twin girls, with the statement “the mother and babies are in excellent health,” without any mention of the father.

How big is the Louis-Dreyfus Group?

But how big and powerful can Louis Dreyfus be, for Margarita to be called “Tsarina”? If annual sales of 120 billion (net revenue of around 50-60 billion dollars yearly), operations in 100 countries, and 22,000 employees don’t say much to you, then perhaps the “ABCD” can. The four companies that dominate global agricultural product trade and primarily grains—Archer Daniels Midland, Bunge, Cargill, and Louis Dreyfus—are known as “ABCD.” These four companies were also involved in the 2011 scandal about grain price manipulation and tax evasion in Argentina.

The French company represents about 10% of global agricultural trade flows, is the world’s largest cotton and rice trader, and the second-largest sugar trader. It is also the third-largest trader of copper, zinc, and lead concentrates globally, only behind Glencore and Trafigura.

Louis Dreyfus is not just involved in agriculture and food processing. It also operates in international shipping with a fleet of oceangoing vessels, freight transportation, banking (owning the French bank Louis Dreyfus and shares in other banks), telecommunications infrastructure development, real estate management, and trades everything from minerals to Brazilian coffee, also owning several hedge funds.

LD was founded in 1851 by Leopold Dreyfus, an 18-year-old Alsatian Jew, who became wealthy from his adolescence by buying and reselling grain from farmers to more distant regions. Leopold Dreyfus thus created one of Europe’s strongest dynasties. To this day, the company he founded is owned and managed by descendants of the same family.

OLT and the Shareholders

Margarita Louis-Dreyfus is now poised to take a leading role in Greek business life after submitting an optional public offer to acquire up to 2,116,800 shares of OLT, representing 21% of the company’s capital, through the company “Leonidsport B.V.”

The company, which bears the name of Margarita’s grandfather, began the process yesterday, informing the Capital Markets Commission and OLT’s Board of Directors, submitting the information prospectus to them. The offered cash price for acquiring each share in the Public Offer is 27 euros. It should be noted that OLT’s stock closed at 22.88 euros yesterday, which is a premium of more than 17% compared to the price of the company’s shares.