Marine Harvest’s largest shareholder, John Fredriksen, took notice of the abrupt fall on the stock exchange yesterday.
Fredriksen Group’s largest shareholding is not in shipping, rigs nor in oil. It’s in Marine Harvest which was priced at just over EUR 1.5 billion on Friday.
In the past five years, twin daughters Cecilie and Kathrine Astrup Fredriksen have their shifted focus from shipping and offshore to the group’s financial investments in property and seafood.
Hard life
“Shipping means a tough life and requiring that you be connected 24 hours a day. To me it has been and is a lifestyle, this is what I can and enjoy,” said John Fredriksen to the publication Finansavisen.
“But Cecilie and Kathrine should not take this role. In recent years, they have been fully focused on managing and building up the Group’s investments outside of shipping and offshore. This is where most of the values lie, so it’s more reasonable to spend time there than to keep track of every end in the shipping market,” he added.
Organisation
“We are well in the process of finding an organisation which means that they can eventually take ownership of their own business, without having to follow the tank, dry cargo and rig markets from hour to hour every day throughout the year,” Fredriksen continued.
The rig company Seadrill is one of the Fredriksen companies that have been most noticed by the stock exchange this autumn. Marine Harvest managed better, even with a slight decline of seven percent since the begining of October.
“We were able to earn a few billion dollars in our holding companies until the fall of the stock exchange. The downturn on the stock exchanges reduced this figure strongly. At the same time, it probably creates new opportunities for us.”
