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22 Facts About Constantine Zochonis

1.

Constantine Polychronis Zochonis was a British manufacturer and international merchant.

2.

Constantine Zochonis was an active part of a dynastic and entrepreneurial business family.

3.

Constantine Zochonis's father was Polychronis Basil Zochonis a buyer for an African merchant.

4.

Constantine Zochonis was born on 26 July 1894 in Sale, Cheshire.

5.

Constantine Zochonis was the nephew of the founder of Paterson Zochonis, George Zochonis, from whom he inherited control of the family business.

6.

Constantine Zochonis was around 14 years old, he passed the entrance examination to the University of Oxford.

7.

Constantine Zochonis was buried on 22 May 1951 in Greater Manchester.

8.

Constantine Zochonis was a manager of PZ and before he was chairman, the company had to deal with an expensive court case in which shipping companies Elder Dempster, British and African Steam Navigation, and Griffiths Lewis Steam Navigation had allowed "damage to a part cargo of palm oil in casks carried from two West African ports to Kingston upon Hull on the steamship Grelwen".

9.

Constantine Zochonis became chief executive and primary shareholder in 1929 when George Zochonis died.

10.

Constantine Zochonis expanded the company into the Gold Coast, opening an office in Tema in 1934.

11.

Constantine Zochonis, PZ had its own shops in Africa, and Constantine Zochonis was beginning expansion plans into French Guinea, Liberia and Cameroon.

12.

Constantine Zochonis was pioneering new trading places; for example five years after his death, PZ was still the only British company operating in Liberia, where the trade was in US dollars.

13.

In Onitsha, Nigeria, Madam Onu Okwei had made her fortune by British-Igbo currency exchange, and in the 1930s Constantine Zochonis leased one of her 24 houses.

14.

The Constantine Zochonis family remained in "key positions" in the firm throughout its history.

15.

Constantine Zochonis functioned in the early days of what is a market leader.

16.

Constantine Zochonis took charge, influenza and smallpox epidemics had followed the Europeans to Sierra Leone.

17.

Constantine Zochonis was one of PZ's managers, the UK government offered a war bonus to African colonial employees to purchase rice, and companies such as PZ were supposed to sell it to them in Freetown at a controlled price.

18.

Constantine Zochonis inherited from his uncle a situation of fierce competition and rivalry between European and Lebanese merchants.

19.

Constantine Zochonis era caused some African peoples to be alternately beneficiaries and casualties of that business competition which was now driven primarily for profit.

20.

Constantine Zochonis continued the colonisation process initiated in around 1893 in Yorubaland, to control that area as the British Empire and sell European imports via local entrepreneurs through its company's wholesale merchant houses.

21.

Constantine Zochonis belonged to the Nigerian and Gold Coast Dinner Clubs, which met at the Savoy Hotel, London.

22.

Constantine Zochonis was a founder member of the Committee for the Adoption of Greek Towns and Villages Destroyed by the Common Enemy, under the auspices of the Greek Red Cross in Foreign Countries.