Nordstjernan
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Nordstjernan (Swedish pronunciation: [ˈnûːɖˌɧæːɳan]) is a Swedish investment company. Nordstjernan is a fourth-generation family company controlled by the Axel and Margaret Ax:son Johnson Foundation. The origin is the shipping company Nordstjernan, which was founded in 1890.
History
The first generation
The founder,
By the start of the twentieth century, Axel Johnson was already a leading shipowner in Sweden and a pioneer of regular traffic to South America, with the La Plata route. It was Axel Johnson's final business transaction that put Nordstjernan on the map. He managed to break the international coffee monopoly, "the coffee conference", a strictly controlled pricing cartel for the transportation of coffee to Europe. Axel Johnson built, thanks to his talent, will and ambition, combined with favourable external factors, the company that was to form the basis of the Johnson Group, and which was later developed by his son, Axel Ax:son Johnson (1876-1958).
The second generation
Axel Ax:son Johnson, or the
The diversification and expansion of the Johnson Group was guided by the integration principle. The aim was to make the Group self-sufficient in goods and services. The trading house took care of the sales (steel) and purchases (coal) for Avesta Jernverk, the shipping company was partially formed to take care of the trading house's transport requirements, the oil refinery supplied the vessels of the shipping company with oil and the Swedish roads with asphalt. The investments formed the core of the empire, which comprised a hundred companies at the time of his death. The Consul-General left behind him Sweden's largest individually controlled group of companies.
The third generation
The Consul-General's oldest son,
Under the leadership of the Mining Engineer, the computer company Datema was started and connections with the
At the beginning of the 1960s, Nordstjernan was expanded and internationalized, like the rest of Swedish industry. This was a consequence of the head-start achieved because Sweden was not involved in World War II. New markets opened up and trade was liberalized. Nordstjernan evolved into a vast conglomerate. The crisis experienced by Sweden in the 1970s was reflected in all of Nordstjernan's sectors. Long-term structural changes and economic cycles caused major losses in most of the businesses operated by the Group - shipping, engineering, oil and steel. The 1970s crisis forced Nordstjernan to break with the sacred principle of complete independence, and the listing of the company began to be discussed with the aim of gaining access to external venture capital.
In 1981, Bo Ax:son Johnson (1917-1997) took over his brother's earlier assignments and functions in the Johnson Group, with the exception of those taken over by Axel's daughter Antonia Ax:son Johnson (1943-), A. Johnson & Co and A. Johnson & Co Inc (now the Axel Johnson Group).
Bo Ax:son Johnson began what is called a "
The structural transformation and concentration into one core operation is something of a record in Swedish industry. Some 180 companies and legal entities were sold in the ensuing years. No fewer than five companies were listed on the stock market in the process, including
In the 1980s, Nordstjernan was transformed from a closed family company and industrial conglomerate to become a listed Nordic construction and real estate company - NCC. Following the acquisition of SIAB in spring 1997, which was Bo Ax:son Johnson's last business transaction, the aim of becoming the largest, market-leading construction company in the Nordic region had been realized. Nordstjernan remains the principal owner of NCC.[citation needed]
The fourth generation
Following the death of Bo Ax:son Johnson in 1997, the two cousins
Key people
Peter Hofvenstam (born 1965) is CEO of Nordstjernan AB since 2019.[3]
References
- OCLC 35068016.
- ^ "NORDSTJERNAN: NotFound" (PDF). 2016-03-06. Archived from the original (PDF) on 6 March 2016. Retrieved 2022-07-25.
- ^ "Management". Nordstjernan AB. Retrieved 2012-04-16.
- ^ "Board of Directors". Nordstjernan AB. Retrieved 2012-04-16.
- Larsson, Sören, Saving, Jaak, Nordstjernan : the inside story (translated by David Jenkins), Stockholm: Norstedt, 1990.