From Wall Street to launching an investment bank in the midst of a market downturn, Antonios Achilleoudis has built his career by learning to navigate uncertainty. Speaking at INSPIRE 2026, the Chairman of the Board of AXIA Ventures Group and Alpha Finance reflected on how his journey from Cyprus to New York shaped his entrepreneurial mindset and taught him to turn adversity into opportunity.
“Where my journey started has to go way back because I started in Cyprus. I went to high school here. I went to the army here. And I went to New York at New York University to study. At NYU, you're part of a very vibrant, very fast-paced city. And it was extremely exciting,” Achilleoudis said.
Speaking on a panel entitled ‘The Journey of My Life: Cypriot Business Leaders Making Their Mark Abroad,’ on the Beyond Borders Stage moderated by George Angastiniotis, Chief Editor at InBusinessNews, Achilleoudis, who now lives in Greece, recalled having studied finance and accounting and going on to work on Wall Street, including at Gruntal & Co, before, some seven to eight years later, deciding to become an entrepreneur.
Before AXIA’s acquisition by Alpha Bank at the end of 2025, Antonios was a Founding Partner and Group Managing Director of AXIA. He started AXIA in 2000 and is now the Chairman and a non-Executive Member of the Board of Directors of AXIA Ventures Group. Achilleoudis is also the Chairman and a non-Executive Member of the Board of Directors of Alpha Finance.
“Now I have come full circle,” he continued in his talk at INSPIRE 2026, “After 25 years in New York, my job brought me back to Europe since we expanded the offices in Athens, Cyprus, in Portugal and Italy. And as a result, it made more sense for me to be here.”
While he now lives in Greece, Achilleoudis said he was very happy to encourage other Cypriots to follow in his professional footsteps.
He also revealed that growing up in Cyprus and going to the army here was a significant reason he wanted to study somewhere completely different. “The only commonality between Cyprus and New York City is that both are small islands, but New York is a little more crowded. I think moving from high school to the army and learning that no matter how well you do your job or how responsible you are, life is not fair and things might not turn out your way and you might pay a price for something that somebody else did was very valuable because I went very well equipped into life,” he said.
Even though he did not enjoy his time in the army, “having that rooted in my personality by then, I think helped me become much more of a fighter in a place that was super energetic and inspiring. So you have the capacity to basically fight on and say, ‘nobody's better than me and I can do whatever everybody else is doing.’ And there was a lot of momentum building into that.”
The experience also helped him stand out from others, making it easier for him to feel less entitled and able to move on even after experiencing an unfairness.
Growing up in Cyprus also made Achilleoudis eager to experience life in a more open–and less watchful society. “I felt liberated being in a place that 11 million people go in and out of every day… this also meant that I could take risks without, I shouldn't say caring, but without the burden that somebody who grew up there might have.”
The entrepreneur believes that relocating to the US from Cyprus allowed him to take a trajectory that was different from both what someone who had grown up in the US or stayed in Cyprus may have done and encourages anyone thinking of studying, working or moving to another country to fully embrace the experience.
However, his own professional efforts were not without their challenges: “After working for seven or eight years, I started an investment company, an investment bank, in March 2000, right when there was a stock market correction, a significant correction that lasted a couple of years.”
While a major setback, he also describes the events as “the greatest thing that could have happened to me because I didn't take anything for granted and I felt like you're swimming against the current. So if you get used to swimming against the current, then if the current comes your way, you're resting. You don't even feel like you're doing anything.”
After that, regulation in Cyprus and the opening of offices here and in Greece followed. “ In 2008, Lehman Brothers collapsed, so here we are again, swimming against the current,” he continued, going on to note, “I moved to Greece in 2013 because Greece was on a trajectory of growth and all our clients were looking to the European regions and Greece to understand how to invest their money. And we know what happened next…We had a government that pretty much shut down the banking system.”
A few years later, COVID shut down business completely once again. Achilleoudis went on to note, “So I'm almost used to driving in the dark and not knowing where my destination is, and from failures come opportunities, and you have to learn from that. And I think it's not something that everybody can do, because if you're not accustomed to that process, it's very easy to basically fall flat on your face, and it's better to have a more structured career in life. But if you're conditioned to do that, I think you can achieve great things.”
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