A. P. Moller-Maersk Group Shipping Magnate Maersk Mc-Kinney Moller Dead At 98

Oil and shipping magnate Maersk Mc-Kinney Moller of A. P. Moller-Maersk Group Shipping died on April 16, he was 98-years old.

Following his death stock prices jumped 6 percent and then fell to a 3% raise at the company as analysts predicted Moller’s death could lead to demergers or a stock split. Analyst Jesper Christensen tells Reuters:

“It could be a stock split or a demerger of for instance Danske Bank (DANSKE.CO) or Dansk Super market.”

Maersk is the song and grandon of company founders Arnold Peter Moller and Peter Maersk Moller. When his father died in 1965 Maersk took over the company. In 1993 the aging Maersk handed over control of the company to Jess Soderberg and then in 2003 he gave up control of the chairmanship to Michael Pram Rasmussen. Soderberg would later be replaced by Nils Smedegaard Andersen in 2007.

While Moller gave up control of the company on a public level he remained intimately involved in its decisions, frequenting the company’s Copenhagen headquarters while traveling around the world well into his 90s in order to promote the company on his own accord.

When not working Maersk liked to work with the community, in January 2005 he donated 2.5 billion crowns to build a new Copenhagen opera house.

A. P. Moller-Maersk Group employs nearly 117,000 people in 130 countries.

At the time of his death Maersk Mc-Kinney Moeller was estimated to be worth $5.1 billion thanks to his company’s various global interests.

Married in 1940 to his childhood girlfriend Emma the couple would go on to have three daughters together.