June 26, (THEWILL) – Flour Mills of Nigeria is no doubt a very popular brand in Nigerian business circles, but not many know that the public liability company listed on the Nigeria Stock Exchange, which paid a whooping N80 billion to acquire Honeywell Flour, was founded by late Greek businessman, George Stavros Coumantaros, who passed on in 2016. The patriarch of the Coumantaros family was also the founder of Southern Star Shipping, a privately-owned international shipping company.
Like Lebanese immigrant, Gilbert Chagoury who saw a golden opportunity and moved to Nigeria, Lagos specifically in the early 1970s to set up a conglomerate, Coumantaros, a grand Archon of the Greek Orthodox Church, arrived in Nigeria in 1959 from Argentina where he was raised by his parents.
Impressed by the vast arable land in the country and the limitless opportunities available to foreigners who were trooping into Nigeria at that time, he established a very small family business known as Flour Mills of Nigeria. The company started out as a wheat miller and was in fact the first wheat miller in Nigeria.
Over the years, Coumantaros grew the company to become one of the biggest brands in the food and agro-allied industry in Africa and the largest in Nigeria with a range of products instantly recognisable in any Nigerian household. The company’s first investment outside flour milling was BAGCO in 1978 and the cement industry in 2012, but it would later sell the cement company to one of its competitors, Lafarge cement to focus on its area of core competence, the food business.
Before his death, the patriarch handed over the reins of the business to his fourth child, John, who is the current Chairman of Flour Mills of Nigeria. He manages the business and holds it in trust for the Counmantros family and the family’s 64 per cent stake in it. So profitable has John grown the business that the family will receive a whopping sum of N5.58 billion ($13.45 million) in 2021 dividends from the group’s retained earnings of N111.1 billion ($267.5 million) at the end of its 2022 fiscal year.
The Coumantaros family no longer live in Nigeria. Again, just like Chagoury, the family acquired US citizenship and currently live in New York. However, unlike the older Chagoury who had to leave Nigeria after he allegedly fell out of favour with the Muhammadu Buhari-led Federal Government for allegedly bankrolling the election campaign of former President Goodluck Jonathan in 2015, the Coumantaros family had to seek US citizenship due to the portfolio of investments and properties acquired by their late father in that country. In fact, John reportedly runs Flour Mill of Nigeria from his New York office. Also, very much unlike the patriarch of the Chagoury family, who has spent the past 40 years building political connections both in the US and Nigeria and flourished through his close association with late military Head of State, General Sani Abacha and allegedly laundered money for him, the Coumantaros have remained solely business-minded and have managed to keep a long distance from anything that might bring disrepute to the family.
Ivory Ukonu is a versatile journalist with many years of experience, with entertainment and society reporting as her area of core competence.
