Arne Wilhelmsen leaves behind a business empire that the high-profile shipowner had already shifted to the next generation of the family.
As TradeWinds reported on Monday, the Norwegian shipping executive died in Spain at the weekend. Wilhelmsen, 90, was at his family's leisure home at Palma on the island of Majorca.
His death came two years after that of his brother, Gjert.
Arne's ownership stake in family holding companies Aweco Holding and Anders Wilhelmsen (Awilhelmsen) had long been transferred to his sons.
Alex, Bent Christian and Peter Preben Wilhelmsen are now sole owners of Awilhelmsen, a diversified company with interests in containerships, VLCCs and real estate through the company Linstow. It has controlling stakes in Awilco Drilling and Awilco LNG.
Most of the family’s assets lie in a 12% stake in cruiseship major Royal Caribbean Cruises, which Arne co-founded. He was a board member for more than 30 years before ceding his seat to son Alex in 2003.
Last autumn, the Norwegian financial magazine Kapital estimated that Arne and his family were worth NOK 31bn ($3bn). According to Forbes, Wilhelmsen was worth $1.9bn.
Arne, a Harvard Business School MBA, was born on 15 June 1929 in Oslo. He joined Anders Wilhelmsen in 1954 and became its president in 1961.
That company, started by Arne’s father Anders in 1939, developed into a diversified outfit that in the 1970s joined forces with IM Skaugen and Gotaas-Larsen to form Royal Caribbean.
In 1988, the Wilhelmsen brothers' two partners decided to sell their shares to arch-rival Carnival Cruise Line.
What would have been a merger was thwarted when the Wilhelmsens secured new US partners for the operation, which paved the way for enormous growth for Royal Caribbean. The company was eventually listed in the US.
Arne had many positions in Norwegian organisations, including the Norwegian Shipowners' Association, whose chief executive, Harald Solberg, described him as an important leader in domestic shipping from the early 1960s to around 2000.
Arne was also vice chairman for 12 years of Morgenbladet, Norway’s oldest paper and now part of the NHST Media Group, which owns TradeWinds.
