Biography
Born on Oslo's east side, Etterstad, the son of a welder, Fredriksen began as a trainee in a shipbroking company. At the age of 27 he started working for himself. Fredriksen made his fortune during the Iran-Iraq wars in the 1980s when his tankers picked up oil at great risk and huge profits. As described by his biographer, "he was the lifeline to the Ayatollah." He is now the world's largest tanker owner, with more than seventy oil tankers, and major interests in oil rigs and fish farming. His fleet is dominated by costly double-hulled, environmentally safer tankers.
Back in December 2005 rumours circulated of Fredriksen-controlled firm Seadrill bidding for Stavanger based rig company Smedvig, and since has been in a bidding war with U.S. company Noble Corporation. But it was announced in late January 2006 that Seadrill had bought more than 50 percent of Smedvig, and therefore gained control of the company (51.24 percent of the votes and 52.27 percent of the capital). Smedvig is valued at NOK 15 billion, and is Fredriksen's biggest ever deal. Noble Corp sold its stake in Smedvig to Seadrill in April 2009. Smedvig is now fully under Seadrill's control.
Fredriksen has been the majority owner of Vålerenga I.F. for many years.
Read more about this topic: John Fredriksen
Famous quotes containing the word biography:
“In how few words, for instance, the Greeks would have told the story of Abelard and Heloise, making but a sentence of our classical dictionary.... We moderns, on the other hand, collect only the raw materials of biography and history, “memoirs to serve for a history,” which is but materials to serve for a mythology.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The death of Irving, which at any other time would have attracted universal attention, having occurred while these things were transpiring, went almost unobserved. I shall have to read of it in the biography of authors.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“A great biography should, like the close of a great drama, leave behind it a feeling of serenity. We collect into a small bunch the flowers, the few flowers, which brought sweetness into a life, and present it as an offering to an accomplished destiny. It is the dying refrain of a completed song, the final verse of a finished poem.”
—André Maurois (1885–1967)