Abbe

"If Abbe got a stage to perform on, preferably in front of a large audience, he was very troublesome. The role – living the myth – became the main focus at the expense of content."

"I had learned from Kenne Fant, a friend and CEO at SF, that Hufvudstaden wanted to divest SF but also that the question of price was owned by Gunnar. We concluded the deal subject to the DN group's approval of the rather significant price of 55 million SEK. "Even if it had cost 100 million SEK, I would have gone for it," Abbe quickly said to me as we left. Gunnar Schmidt knew how to charge, but the agreement he wrote in pencil on less than an A4 page was turned into a thick bundle by a clever gentleman at Lagerlöf's law firm. During the review, I occasionally asked Gunnar if the text interpreted his view of the matter. Gunnar then immediately told the lawyer to change the formulations. There was never the slightest miscommunication with him."

"But we absolutely should not think of Holmen as a subsidiary because this would certainly be wrong from all possible angles. We should not sit on the board due to the conflict of interest between the customer perspective and the ownership perspective. I got the okay from Abbe and quickly bought us up. This led to talks with Holmen about the past and the future. We established an informal connection where Abbe also participated. Our good relationship became important when Holmen made its successful investment in Braviken, the large paper mill outside Norrköping. It would have been difficult to carry out if the two largest owners had been at odds with each other."

"My conclusion was that it was entirely wrong of us in company management to let the two unions settle the demarcation between themselves and thereby lose the initiative. The graphic designers, however, succeeded by appealing to the "bourgeoisie's guilty conscience"—such was the zeitgeist. The lesson was that company management had relinquished an important issue. This lesson and Abbe's involvement were personal low points for me from which useful experiences could be gained."

"Albert Bonnier Jr – known everywhere simply as Abbe – was undeniably an impressive person, not only due to his characteristic and commanding exterior with a bass voice in a league of its own. His natural leadership of the family clan alongside Gerard Bonnier had mythical proportions in Swedish media based on the development of the very profitable and successful magazine business during the 1940s and 1950s. But he was also problematic with a curious mix of banalities and deep insight."