Has run transport and logistics group, Kuhne & Nagel, for four decades. Holds 56% stake in the public company; grandfather August Kuhne was group's founder. Lives in Switzerland but still has ties to his birthplace, Hamburg. In 2008, in an effort to keep the company anchored in Germany, Kuhne and a group of investors that included the city of Hamburg formed the Albert Ballin KG consortium to bid for 160-year old Hapag Lloyd, one of the world's leading container ship operators. After a long bidding battle, the consortium obtained 57% of the company last year. Although he lives in landlocked Switzerland, has built an extravagant house said to look like the main command deck of an ocean liner.
