Dakis Joannou (Leonidas Ioannou; ; born December 30, 1939) is a Greek Cypriot industrialist and art collector. He is considered to be one of the leading collectors of contemporary art in the world and is famous for acquisitions such as the Jeff Koons-designed yacht 'Guilty'. Early life and education Dakis Joannou was born in Nicosia, Cyprus. Son of industrialist Stelios Joannou, and co-founder of the Joannou & Paraskevaides company, Joannou graduated from Athens College in 1958 after moving to Greece. In 1962 he continued his education in the United States, receiving his bachelor's degree in civil engineering from Cornell University. In 1964, he completed his master's degree from Columbia University and in 1967 accomplished his Doctorate in Architecture at Sapienza University of Rome, Italy. Career Joannou entered the construction and civil engineering business in the late 1960s and ever since has diversified his holdings through numerous areas of international industrial commerce. Joannou's core business is construction, with primary focus in the Middle East, North Africa, Greece, and Southeastern Europe. Joannou is active in the hospitality sector, with holdings in the Athenaeum InterContinental 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 Coca-Cola bottling, shipping, aviation, and real estate. Art collection Joannou is a major collector of contemporary art and is the founder of the DESTE Foundation for Contemporary Art, which was established in 1983. 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 1960s and 1970s has grown to be what is known as the 1968 Furniture Collection and which is the subject of a book created in collaboration with artist Maurizio Cattelan and photographer Pierpaolo Ferrari. In 2007, Joannou established the destefashioncollection. Each year up until 2014, the DESTE Foundation commissioned 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 five of the capsule collections (2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, and 2012), was presented in the iconic storefront windows of Barney’s,