Costas Hatzidakis
Costas Hatzidakis, a lawyer from Crete, spent 12 years in the European parliament before returning to Greece in 2007 to run in a national election with the right-of-centre New Democracy party. Seen as a technocrat, he was appointed transport minister with the thankless task of privatising Olympic Airlines. Against the odds, Mr Hatzidakis reached a deal with the European Commission on repayment of illegal state aid, persuaded militant unions to accept redundancies and found a local buyer. He was promoted to development minister following a cabinet reshuffle in January with a brief to overhaul Greece’s competition committee, in disrepute after a bribery scandal. He is also involved in pipeline politics – negotiating a role for Greece in South Stream, the new Russian natural gas pipeline, while finalising a deal to buy gas from Azerbaijan that would be shipped through Turkey to Greece and Italy.

Lavrentis Lavrentiadis
Lavrentis Lavrentiadis, 37, put himself through university, studying for a first degree in accounting and finance, followed by a distance-learning PhD in marketing, while working almost full-time to rescue a struggling family business. A self-styled outsider, he chose to invest in industrial chemicals, gradually consolidating a number of producers in Greece and neighbouring Balkan countries into the Neochimiki group, which was sold to Carlyle, the private equity group, two years ago. Mr Lavrentiadis has been following a similar strategy in pharmaceuticals and veterinary products, acquiring smaller local manufacturers and distributors under the umbrella of a new company, Alapis, which is listed on the Athens stock exchange. He has also started to invest in local media. But his latest project, setting up a €4bn ($5.7bn) private equity fund to invest in Greece and southeast Europe, is on hold because of the global slowdown.