Morten Sigval Bergesen

Morten Sigval Bergesen (born 2 June 1951) is a Norwegian ship-owner.

He was born in Stockholm as a grandson of Sigval Bergesen the Younger. He was also a great-grandson of Sigval Bergesen, grandnephew of Ole Bergesen and cousin of Petter C. G. Sundt. He was a co-owner of his grandfather's shipping company Bergesen d.y. from 1976 together with Petter C. G. Sundt. He sold his share in 2003.

The grandson who sold the family company in 2003 for a reported total price of around $2 billion, Morten Sigval Bergesen Junior, was born on June 2, 1951 in the capital of Sweden, Stockholm. He now lives in fashionable Bygdøy, a peninsula on the western side of Oslo, in the sprawling 1820s Bergehus mansion which is also known in Norwegian as "det hvite hus" or The White House. (The other grandson who jointly controlled the listed group, Petter Sundt, died of cancer in 2007. Both men were known within the family as "The Boys." The Norwegian Stavanger Aftenbladet newspaper reported that the two men got combined proceeds of almost NOK3 billion ($523 million), the paper also lamenting the cutting of a family shipping history which stretched back to the early 1800s and which had been based for most of it in Stavanger. In the years running up to the sale, The Aftenbladet reported a great deal of feuding within the family, partly to do with the mercurial nature of the grandfather who tragically fell out with his son whom he disinherited. Newspapers reported a press conference held by the grandsons who said they sold the company with a "heavy heart" to the family of Helmut Sohmen, whose investment arm had already bought an interest in the group and who had expressed an interest earlier in buying the entire company. Sundt later told a newspaper in an interview that The Boys had tried to buy out the entire family company at one stage, but could not raise the finances. The Sohmen family controlled a fleet of ships run by a Hong Kong based company known as the World-Wide Shipping, which was involved in both the tanker and dry bulk shipping. Austrian-born Helmut Sohmen, who had married Hong Kong woman Anna Pui Hing Pao after meeting her in Canada while studying, subsequently created the group BW or Bergesen Worldwide and was listed in the Forbes magazine list of billionaires. The buyers enjoyed good fortune: within two years the Norwegian business paper Dagens Industri had reported that Helmut Sohmen and son Andreas Sohmen-Pao had increased the share capital valuation of BW from around NOK10 billion to NOK23 billion. In the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten's list of tax payers in 2009 the grandson Bergesen was estimated to have a fortune of NOK 1,109,059,544 which is about $193.2 million at 2012 exchange rates. Apart from being the former CEO of Sig Bergesen d y & Co, he worked with the company of the renowned Greek Colocotronis shipping family company in London, and serves as the Chairman of Snefonn AS, Solfonn AS, Langfonn AS, Breifonn AS and Havfonn AS. He serves as Chairman of Supervisory Board at IFM Immobilien AG and served as the Chairman of BW Gas Ltd. Morten's son, also known as Morten Sigval Bergesen, has been active in Norwegian business but to a far lesser extent than his exalted father. Born in 1974 on June 9, in the south west Norwegian coastal town of Stavanger, he is 180 cm tall and weighs approx 90 kg and has been actively involved in the sport of rowing and participated in the 1996 Atlanta, USA, olympic games in the men's coxless fours. He and his crew came eighth in the finals. The great grandson is the CEO of Havfonn AS, the Bergesen family’s investment company which was founded in 2006 and whose office address is Drammensveien 106, Oslo, Norway, 0273 and whose telephone number is +47 22 12 18 70. The company develops and sells real estate. Mr. Bergesen holds a Master of Science in Economics from the BI Norwegian School of Management. Before his current position, he was was employed with Econ, Centre for Economic Analysis in Norway, focusing on logistics, trademark, value chain optimizations, industrial development, trade policies and innovation. Mr. Bergesen is currently the chairman of Bergehus Holding AS, a listed real estate company. He also holds board seats in Arendal Fossekompani, Sonans AS, Cogen AS, Hafonn AS, Selvaag Pluss Eiendom AS in addition to a seat in Agrinos AS—a green technology company committed to improving the productivity and sustainability of modern agriculture. Previously, Mr. Bergesen has held board seats in Grieg Cod Farming AS, Jøtul AS, Venturie AS, and Mapaid AS.