Dakis Joannou

Dakis Joannou (Greek: Δάκης Ιωάννου; born December 30, 1939) is a Greek Cypriot industrialist and art collector. Joannou entered into the construction and civil engineering business in the late 1960s and over the last four decades has diversified his holdings through numerous areas of international industrial commerce. His extensive collection of contemporary art and furniture is considered one of the most important in the world.

Dakis Joannou was born in Nicosia, Cyprus. He graduated from Athens College in 1958 and continued his education in the United States, receiving his bachelor's degree in civil engineering from Cornell University in 1962 and his master's degree from Columbia University in 1964. In 1967 he completed his Doctorate in Architecture at Sapienza University of Rome, Italy. Joannou's core business is construction, where he is chairman of both privately held J&P (Overseas) and ASE, listed as J&P-AVAX. In 1941, Joannou’s father, Stelios Joannou, and his partner, George Paraskevaides, established the J&P Group in Cyprus. It has since expanded to a global enterprise with the company's primary areas of business located in the Middle East, North Africa, and Southeastern Europe.

Joannou is active in the hospitality sector, with holdings in the Inter-Continental Hotel in Athens and through Yes! Hotels, a chain of boutique hotels whose flagships are the Karim Rashid designed Semiramis Hotel and the Campana Brothers designed NEW Hotel in Athens. Joannou is also involved in several other industries including bottling, shipping, aviation, and real estate.

He is considered to be one of the leading collectors of European and American contemporary art in the world, and is famous for acquisitions such as the Jeff Koons-designed yacht Guilty. Joannou is married to Lietta; they have two daughters, two sons, and twelve grandchildren.

Joannou is a major collector of European and American contemporary art and is the founder of the DESTE Foundation for Contemporary Art. He is currently serving on the councils of several museums worldwide and has continuously been on ArtReview's Power 100 List since its inception—in 2004 he was ranked its number one collector in the world. Along with his extensive fine art collection, Joannou's interest in furniture from the Italian radical design period of the late 60s and 70s has grown to be what is known as the 1968 Furniture Collection and is the subject of a forthcoming book. In 2007, Joannou also established the Destefashioncollection. Each year, the Foundation commissions an artist familiar with the fashion industry to reinterpret five inspiring designs from that year’s international fashion collections. The first exhibition of the Destefashioncollection, combining the first five capsule collections (2007–2012) was presented in the iconic storefront windows of Barney’s, New York in June 2012.

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