When the price of a 10-pound (4.5-kilogram) Atlantic salmon jumped above the cost of a barrel of crude last month, nobody in the oil industry was celebrating.
For John Fredriksen, who built a fortune on oil tankers and offshore drilling, it did at least provide some consolation. While his total net worth fell 40 percent to $10.6 billion in the past 18 months, the value of his investment in the world’s largest salmon producer climbed by half as fish prices rose to a record.
Fredriksen, who laid the foundation of his shipping fortune in the 1970s and 1980s by making daring bets in the conflict-ridden Middle East, has seen his about 25 percent stake in Marine Harvest ASA turn into his most valuable equity holding. That’s proving to be a boon for the 71-year-old Norwegian-born billionaire amid the worst crude market in a generation.
“Getting into fish was undoubtedly a smart move,” Kolbjoern Giskeoedegaard, an analyst at Nordea Bank AB, said in a phone interview. “What’s important for a system like the Fredriksen system, and which they’ve focused on increasingly these past years, is to put their eggs in several baskets.”
[…]
Fredriksen, now a citizen of Cyprus, has signaled he intends to hold on to his position in Marine Harvest, Chairman Ole Eirik Leroey said in an interview in Aalesund, Norway last week.
