Andreas Liveras made two fortunes in baking and went on to own luxury yachts that he chartered to the rich and famous. His death last week at the hands of terrorists in Mumbai, came six months after he, with his son, had been named the UK’s 265th wealthiest individual by the compilers of The Sunday Times Rich List.

Liveras was born in 1935 in Anayia just south of Nicosia in what is now the Greek part of Cyprus. He was the eldest of eight children whose father was a shepherd. He arrived in Britain in 1963, at the age of 28, and found work as a deliveryman for a patisserie business based in Kensington, West London. Within five years he had bought the company and fifteen years after that it had become one of Britain’s largest makers of frozen desserts.

Liveras, and his company, Fleur de Lys, capitalised on the burgeoning popularity of prepared foods that came as Britain emerged from the austerity years after the Second World War. As well as selling raw food ingredients, supermarkets discovered there was demand for an increasing number of lines that eased what some customers saw as domestic chores such as cooking. Black Forest gâteau was an enduring favourite through the 1970s.

By 1987 Fleur de Lys was attracting plaudits from buyers at supermarkets for supplying product that was notably better than its rivals. Keith Shaw, a former bakery director of Tesco, singled out Fleur de Lys as impressive for the quality of its goods and for its ability to innovate.

In the same year Fleur de Lys also attracted the acquisitive attentions of Grand Metropolitan, the food manufacturing multinational that subsequently merged with Guinness, the drinks business, to form Diageo. GrandMet paid £12 million for Fleur de Lys, in a deal that gave Liveras the cash to help his son, Dionysios, to start a second bakery business.

Laurens Patisseries was established in the East Midlands town of Newark, near to the Nottinghamshire home that Liveras had found for Fleur de Lys. Liveras and his son continued to enjoy pickings from the rich seam of business provided by the popularity of prepared meals. Demand was fuelled by demographic and lifestyle changes. More mothers went out to work and more younger people, with less inclination to cook for themselves, set up house on their own.

By 2005 Laurens was selling £75 million of cakes and chilled puddings per year, and had seen the sum grow by 25 per cent a year since 1999. Liveras was therefore able to sell Laurens for more than ten times as much as he had secured on the sale of Fleur de Lys almost two decades earlier. It was bought by Bakkavor, one of the clutch of ambitious Icelandic companies that, before the onset of the credit crunch, were making their presence felt in Britain and across the world.

Andreas Liveras took £100 million of the £130 million sale price in cash. The remaining £30 million was in shares of Bakkavor and while the value of these have plummeted in recent months, the decision to take a large part of the consideration in hard currency protected the Liveras family fortune. Laurens employed 12,000 people at the time of its sale to Bakkavor.

Agust Gudmundsson, its executive chairman, described the company as “a high quality supplier of desserts with good customer relations and a strong reputation for quality, innovation and service”.

Liveras developed an interest in yachts in the late 1980s, as he sought ways to enjoy the wealth he had created through Fleur de Lys. He was aged about 50 when it was sold to GrandMet, and he told friends that he was bored by retirement. He began by chartering out his own yacht and then began buying, renovating and selling craft.

Liveras’s big success came as he spotted a gap in the market. Much as he had capitalised on the emerging popularity of prepared foods in the late 1960s and early 1970s, he now saw that there was money to be made renting out yachts to those who could not afford craft of their own or did not want the inconvenience of keeping a yacht permanently seaworthy. By the time he died, Liveras Yachts had two of the world’s most luxurious vessels available for charter. The crafts are 280 feet in length with berths for up to 36 guests. Charter rates start at about £500,000 per week.

Liveras is survived by three daughters and his son, Dionysios, who joined the Bakkavor board when Laurens was sold to the Icelanders. Liveras was predeceased by his wife.

Andreas Liveras, bakery tycoon, was born on April 1, 1935. He died of gunshot wounds on November 26, 2008, aged 73