John Fredriksen

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John Fredriksen (center) with Stelios Haji-Ioannou (left) and others at a meeting, 1989

John Fredriksen (born May 11, 1944 in Etterstad near Oslo ) is a Norwegian-Cypriot billionaire and financial investor . He has the largest tanker fleet in the world and, through his company Marine Harvest, is the world's largest producer of farmed salmon .

Life

John Fredriksen was born on May 11, 1944, the son of a welder and grew up in simple circumstances. He attended evening high school while working for a ship broker. Fredriksen later started in Germany . As a young broker, he shipped loads of fresh fish from Iceland to Hamburg . He later moved to the United States and Canada . He started his oil engagement in the late 1960s. Fredriksen sold crude oil from Saudi Arabia and Iraq to the west.

When the oil trade almost collapsed due to the oil crisis in the mid-1970s , Fredriksen started his own business in 1974; he bought up a large number of ships and started his own tanker fleet, which today is the largest in the world with almost 90 ships.

Fredriksen cultivates contacts in the Near and Middle East so well that he was one of the few traders who supplied Iranian oil during the eight-year war between Iran and Iraq (1980 to 1988).

At the same time, he himself preferred to stay out of the public eye. He never admitted that he owned ships, but referred to unnamed investors. “ I was more discreet than today, ” says Fredriksen. He also rejected criticism that he had supported the apartheid regime in South Africa with oil deliveries: all Norwegian shipowners had done that.

Companies

Fredriksen controls Frontline and Golar LNG through his investment companies Hemen Holding ( Limassol , Cyprus ) and Meisha . He also has equity interests in the oil rig operator Seadrill (28%), the fishing company Mowi , and the Golden Ocean Group . Fredriksen recently announced that he owned 9.6% of the also large shipping company, the Overseas Shipholding Group . Fredriksen also became known in the German media through his involvement with the German group TUI . He is pushing for Hapag-Lloyd to be spun off from the TUI Group so that he can better benefit from the consolidation of global container shipping.

citizenship

He was the richest person in Norway until, in May 2006, after a dispute with the Norwegian tax authorities, he decided to surrender his passport and take citizenship of the Republic of Cyprus .

He said in an interview about the tax system and bureaucracy in Norway: " It is almost impossible to do business in Norway today ".

Private wealth

The US magazine Forbes estimates Fredriksen's personal fortune at $ 11.3 billion in 2012. This puts him in 75th place among the richest people in the world.

Forbes compared Fredriksen in 2001 with the shipowner Aristotle Onassis and said: " A tanker fleet bigger than anything Aristotle Onassis ever had " ( German : A fleet larger than anything Aristotle Onassis ever had.)

family

Fredriksen is widowed. The cancer death of his wife Inger Astrup (* 1950) aroused great sympathy in Norway at the end of 2006. The twin daughters Kathrine and Cecilie (* 1983) familiarized themselves with the shipping business in Singapore and are now employed in his group. Fredriksen currently lives in London .

Movie

  • Salmon fever. Documentary, Germany, 2010, 43 min., Written and directed: Wilfried Huismann and Arno Schumann, production: AnaConda International Film, WDR , first broadcast: March 10, 2010, film information from Huismann.

Web links

swell

  1. ^ Clemens Bomsdorf: John Fredriksen - Vikings on a collision course. ( Memento of March 13, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) In: Financial Times Deutschland of March 7, 2008.
  2. ↑ TUI - Vikings on board. In: manager magazin of August 21, 2007.
  3. ↑ Clemens Bomsdorf: John Fredriksen - billionaire and tanker king. In: Die Welt from March 14, 2008.
  4. ↑ Helmut Steuer: The crisis captain. In: Handelsblatt of March 9, 2009.
  5. ↑ Grete De Lange: Norway's richest man no longer. ( Memento from June 29, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) In: Aftenposten from May 11, 2006
  6. ↑ The World's Billionaires # 75 John Fredriksen. In: Forbes , March 2012
personal data
SURNAME Fredriksen, John
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Norwegian-Cypriot billionaire and financial investor
DATE OF BIRTH May 11, 1944
PLACE OF BIRTH Etterstad near Oslo