History
The BW group includes two long-standing shipping businesses: World-Wide Shipping (founded by Sir Yue-Kong Pao) and Bergesen d.y. which was acquired by World-Wide in 2003.
In the late 1970s, two British Hongs were taken over by Chinese entrepreneurs: Hutchison Whampoa Ltd by Li Ka-Shing, and Kowloon Wharf by Yue-Kong Pao. Y.K. Pao was a native from Ningbo, Zhejiang province who came to Hong Kong in 1949 and acquired an aging ship to establish the Worldwide Shipping Company in 1955. At its peak in 1979 World-Wide had 204 ships totalling 20,500,000 metric tons deadweight (DWT). In the shipping downturn starting in 1978, World-Wide sold tonnage while prices were still reasonable, paying off debt and building cash resources. In less than five years the fleet had halved in size, allowing World-Wide to avoid the crises suffered by many shipping companies.
Pao passed on his interest in World-Wide in 1989 to his eldest daughter, Anna Sohmen-Pao, shortly before his death in 1991. World-Wide was ranked as the sixth largest shipping fleet (number of vessels) in the world in 2004 and has been chaired by Helmut Sohmen, Pao's eldest daughter's husband, since 1986.
Following a period of stakebuilding starting in late 2000 in Bergesen d.y., the Sohmen family came to an agreement in March 2003 with Morten Bergesen and Petter Sundt, the controlling family shareholders, to buy their interest in Bergesen and mount a full public offering for all outstanding shares. Following completion of this transaction, 2004 saw a reorganisation of the Sohmen family interests with the creation of a new top holding company, Bergesen Worldwide Ltd., registered in Bermuda, which is owned 93% by the Sohmen family and 7% by HSBC. The holding company was subsequently renamed BW Group Limited. In 2005 a further re-organisation took place, accompanied by the re-branding of the business under a single group brand, BW.
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