Her Swedish Billionaire’s Baby

Chapter 3

Samara checked her email, reading through a message she’d gotten from the dean’s office with a frown. Once she was through she sat back with a sigh.

“Huh..” she said. “I should post that on the message board.”

Since she was alone, there was no response from anyone and so she logged into her class blog and copied and pasted the message on there.

Samara is online now

Senior Member

Organization: Masters Student UCLA

Department: TA/MBA

Active: 2008-2015

 Join Date: Feb 2009

Posts: 1,733

Jan Fredriksen- RIP

From one of my professional Institutes have just had the following Press Release:-

Nordstorm’s founder, ship-owner, entrepreneur and family man, Jan Fredriksen has passed away at the age of 66 years old. He leaves behind his children Freja, Arvid, Leo and Bjorn and their families.

Jan Fredriksen was one of Sweden’s greatest entrepreneurs of all time. He was born in 1954 on the island of Donsö, in Gothenburg’s southern archipelago. His childhood on Donsö was marked by close family feeling, responsibility, thrift and diligence, something that would characterize his personality and life. Jan Fredriksen’s father, Gustav Fredriksen, was a major role model for his son. By the time he was 27 years old, he had bought a schooner, on which he was the master. And thus was born the young Jan’s dream, one day he would run his own business. The seed to Nordstorm’s success story was sewn.

The first step was to get an education. He attended both Ljungskile Folk High School and the commercial college in Gothenburg. After various trainee ships, and just 22 years old, he started his first enterprise, the trading company Jan Fredriksen Metallprodukter. Jan Fredriksen had a rare feeling combined with a talent for business. This, combined with hard work, thrift and honesty, made the business flourish. What had started as a small company in the scrap industry quickly grew under Jan Fredriksen’s leadership. The shipping company was started in 1974 and during the 1980s it was operating 12 owned and 12 chartered freighters in coastal traffic. Today, the Nordstorm Sphere is a successful group of companies with operations spread all around the world.

Jan Fredriksen was not the type of director to sit on his laurels, far from the operations. Quite the opposite. He managed the businesses with a firm hand and worked hard and was goal-oriented.

1992 was a crucial year in Nordstorm’s history. This was the year when Jan Fredriksen entered the passenger ferry business, on the Gothenburg-Skagen route. This was the start of Nordstorm Line, which has grown into one of the world’s largest ferry companies.

The original operations, today in the form of Nordstorm Metall, have continued to grow and today they constitute one of the Nordic countries’ largest recycling companies; Nordstorm Fastigheter is one of Sweden’s largest private property companies; Nordstorm Bulk together with Concordia Maritime account for Sweden’s largest tanker shipping business; Nordstorm Drilling is Sweden’s sole Swedish controlled business carrying out off-shore drilling for oil. Many other enterprises within the Nordstorm Sphere, thanks to Jan Fredriksen’s fundamental values, have remained successful and profitable.

So today, the Nordstorm Sphere is one of Sweden’s largest family owned groups of companies with more than 20,000 employees and a turnover of around SEK 60 billion.

As a businessman, Jan Fredriksen was innovative and known for taking decisions relying on his intuition combined with thorough and rapidly completed practical analysis. He was not afraid to go his own way and he had the courage to make difficult decisions. One of his mottos was: Don’t let setbacks get you down, get back on track. Fly low and far.

Nor did Jan Fredriksen forget where he came from and he kept his ideals from his upbringing on Donsö throughout his life. His leadership style was characterized by a practical philosophy: You are never better than the information you have gathered. Which is why he could often be seen on the quayside talking to both customers and employees.

For Jan Fredriksen, family and work was always center stage and he had an engaging approach to his success and fame. For Jan Fredriksen, doing profitable business was both his work and his interest and sharing his successes through donations to charity and foundations was very close to his heart.

In connection with Jan Fredriksen’s 40th birthday in 1994, the Jan Fredriksen Foundation for Research and Culture was founded. Through the foundation, the Fredriksen family provided support to research and cultural activities, mainly in Gothenburg and western Sweden. Over the years, donations have been made to Chalmers, the Gothenburg School of Business, Economics and Law, the Art Museum, Göteborg Opera and Universeum.

A man with creative force has left us, but his lifework lives on. Or as Jan Fredriksen would have said: As long as we live every day in the present and for the future, our journey will never end.

Zuo-feng Zhang

Associate Dean, Research

Samara sighed. Her research subject was shipping and she’d taken up Jan Fredriksen as her research subject. She was sorry to hear he had died. She felt like she knew him personally because of all the research she’d done on him and his family. She knew that Bjorn Fredriksen was poised to take over his father’s business. He had a law degree from Oxford University and an MBA from Yale. He was thirty years old, the middle child, and the most well known of the siblings. He also had a reputation as something of a playboy.

Samara couldn’t wait to see what he did with the family holdings. Sell them piece by piece or consolidate assets and hunker down? Their stock prices were likely to take a hit from the death of Jan so it would be interesting to see what Bjorn did with that.

It would probably also take her research paper to another level so that was an added plus. Samara grinned to herself, sending Amy a text to give her the news. Their friendship had flourished over the six years they’d known each other and Samara had found a new family in Amy’s. Not that she didn’t still miss her own; especially her sister…but she was coming to terms. Her phone pinged a message notification and she clicked on it to read.

Is that a good thing or bad?

Amy asked and Samara shrugged and replied.

Both? I guess.

Samara walked slowly to the school cafeteria where she worked part time as a cashier. It was a good gig because she could research on her iPad while she rung in the orders. Her boss didn’t mind as long as she didn’t screw up the accounts.

It was a hot summer day; the campus was mostly empty except for the summer school crowd. She was dressed in short jean shorts that showcased her long legs to best advantage. Being a five foot eleven black girl had its disadvantages sometimes, especially when she was trying not to be noticed; but she didn’t mind the admiring glances she was getting right now.