Park Hotel

"The partnership was in effect for about four years. It became economically very successful, but a complete failure in all other respects. We co-owned an investment company that came to own primarily hotel properties in Stockholm: Park Hotel, Sheraton, and Anglais, with heavy borrowing. The once skilled CFO at Sandvik, Carl-Eric Björkegren, who had a less successful career as a real estate speculator in the 1980s, wanted to be involved and have an option to sell his shares within a year. The money was to be delivered in ICA bags, as stated in the draft agreement. Nothing came of it."

"Christmas 1995 was for the family, and it was only a few days later that John Fredriksen noticed a small inconspicuous article in Dagens Næringsliv on December 27. It was about possible acquisitions in shipping, and among many candidates, the pink newspaper mentioned Nordic American Shipping (NAS) in Sandefjord. "Potential takeover candidate," it said, with "open ownership structure." In good Norwegian, it meant that the shareholders in NAS were not in love with either steel, directors, or offices. In other words, they would sell if the price was right. Fredriksen chuckled to himself, if only they knew… If the article was also read in Sandefjord, it didn't raise any alarms for Herbjørn Hansson, popularly called "Hebbe-Lille". The booming yet charming man from Rogaland had built up NAS with NOK 50,000 in equity and with his brother and his wife on the board. But then, Hansson was also in the inner circle of established shipowners: former chief of Intertanko and financial director at Kosmos during the war with the Blystad brothers. Indeed, "Hebbe-Lille" took his daily swim every morning in the pool at Park Hotel, confident that he was a big man in Sandefjord. What Hansson did not know, and neither did the journalists at Dagens Næringsliv, was that the period after Christmas was also busy in the floors below the newspaper at Grev Wedels Plass in Oslo. At Fearnley Funds they worked intensively to prepare a lightning attack on the Sandefjord shipping company on behalf of Fredriksen. The suit-clad brokers who ate their bread rolls and glanced over at the unkempt radicals from the newspaper were used to discussing entirely different things than business in the common canteen. The skepticism was mutual, and the ship brokers knew that journalists could have long ears. Therefore, nothing leaked out."