Kuehne + Nagel owner Klaus-Michael Kuehne dies at 89

Klaus-Michael Kuehne was a third-generation owner of the shipping giant. (Kuehne+Nagel)

Klaus-Michael Kuehne, who expanded the Kuehne + Nagel International AG transport company into one of the world’s biggest sea and airfreight forwarders and became Germany’s wealthiest individual, has died. He was 89.

His death, in his longtime hometown of Schindellegi, near Zurich in Switzerland, was confirmed by the company in a statement on Aug. 24.

As a third-generation majority owner of the company, which was founded by his grandfather, Kuehne broadened its global reach through acquisitions. Under his leadership, the firm grew over decades into a global transport behemoth with more than 1,300 offices worldwide and a staff of 88,000. 

“With the passing of Klaus-Michael, we have lost a visionary, a great entrepreneur and an extraordinary personality,” Kuehne + Nagel Chairman Joerg Wolle said. “Our thoughts are with his widow Christine Kuehne.”

Profits soared during the COVID-19 pandemic, when supply chains buckled and freight transport rates skyrocketed. Among freight carriers with expertise in shipping healthcare products, Kuehne + Nagel was a major mover of vaccines. It also increased business when stuck-at-home consumers ordered goods. 

Kuehne’s net worth, rooted in his 55% ownership of Kuehne + Nagel, was $49 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. That’s more than four times what it had been a decade earlier. 

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Kuehne + Nagel has more than 1,300 offices worldwide and a staff of 88,000.  (Alex Kraus/Bloomberg)

He was among a select group of European shipping billionaires that includes Gianluigi Aponte, the founder of MSC Mediterranean Shipping Co. SA; the family behind A.P. Moller-Maersk A/S; and France’s Saade clan, which controls CMA CGM SA.

Kuehne said he worked too much and neglected his private life, not marrying until age 52 and not having any children. His holdings are slated to pass to his charitable foundation, which he established in the 1970s.

During his career, Kuehne also expanded his transport holdings, including buying a stake in Deutsche Lufthansa AG, which he further increased earlier this year. He was among a group of investors that bought a majority holding in Hamburg-based Hapag-Lloyd AG, Germany’s biggest container shipping line, for 4.45 billion euros ($5.2 billion) in 2008.

Kuehne expressed unease about his status as a billionaire and claimed that most of his private wealth belonged to the company, according to a 2015 interview with hotel magazine Cost & Logis.

“I own three houses and a motor yacht — that’s basically it,” he said. “I don’t need a lot more luxury.”

Nazi regime

Though he was just a boy during World War II, Kuehne had to reckon with his company’s record of having served the Nazi regime by transporting furniture and other goods seized from Jews.

According to a 2024 report in Vanity Fair, Kuehne’s father and uncle ousted a Jewish shareholder from Kuehne + Nagel in April 1933, just months after Hitler seized power, and went on to land a quasi-monopoly on moving looted Jewish furniture, art and household goods from occupied Western Europe to Nazi Germany. The Kuehne brothers became Nazi Party members, and the wartime transport made them rich, according to files cited by the magazine.

In 2015, Kuehne commissioned a study of the company’s history for its 125th anniversary that included a chapter on the activities during the Third Reich, but he refused to have it published, Vanity Fair said.

Kuehne declined Vanity Fair’s request for an interview, and his spokesperson noted that Kuehne had been just 7 years old when World War II ended. In 2022, Kuehne told SonntagsZeitung that the time for investigating such matters was decades ago. “At some point, one has to let the dust settle on things,” he said.

Hamburg ties

The secretive Kuehne nurtured a lifetime passion for his industry and created a private Kuehne Logistics University in his native city of Hamburg that caters mostly to graduate students studying aspects of supply chains. He retained strong emotional ties to the German port city, despite having moved Kuehne + Nagel’s base to Switzerland for tax reasons in 1975 and taking up residence there.

In later years, Kuehne attracted unwanted attention due to his investment in the Austrian tycoon Rene Benko’s real estate empire, which collapsed under a pile of debt. Before the spectacular implosion, the German billionaire and Benko had failed to convince Hamburg’s local government on their plan for a new opera house, but it’s now being planned.

Despite his immense wealth, Kuehne remained a very private person, only rarely giving media interviews. He described himself over the years as impatient, detail-oriented, controlling and frugal.

“I am very thrifty indeed,” he said in a 2014 interview with Die Zeit newspaper. “I consider every expense, however small, and get annoyed when money is spent for nothing.”

Family business

Born on June 2, 1937, in Hamburg, Kuehne was the only child of Alfred Kuehne and the former Mercedes Greef, according to his profile on Munzinger Archiv GmbH, an online database.

After attending the Heinrich Hertz Gymnasium, a high school in Hamburg, Kuehne completed a two-year apprenticeship in banking and trade. He joined the family business in 1958, taking the helm eight years later at the age of 29.

Kuehne’s grandfather, August, and his partner, Friedrich Gottlieb Nagel, had laid the foundation for what would become Kuehne & Nagel in 1890 in the northern German city of Bremen as a forwarder of cotton, grain and sugar. August’s son, Alfred, later took over.

Kuehne had to deal with choppy business conditions during his career. As oil prices fell and a recession took hold in the 1970s, Kuehne + Nagel was saddled with debt. Kuehne turned to London-based Lonrho International Ltd., which bought a 50% stake in 1981. 

Kuehne bought back Lonrho’s stake in 1992.

He remained active in the company well into his 80s, becoming honorary chairman in 2011 and retaining membership on a number of committees. He also headed the nonprofit Kuehne Foundation, which funds projects in logistics, medicine, climate action and culture.

His holding company and foundation are in the same building in the small town of Schindellegi, close to one of his homes. Despite having lived abroad for half a century, Kuehne said his roots remained in Germany and especially Hamburg.

As part of this attachment, Kuehne bought a stake in the Hamburger SV soccer team — die Rothosen, or the Red Shorts — long the pride of the port city. He also developed a luxury hotel in Hamburg, The Fontenay.

He lived with his wife, Christine, in Switzerland and on the Spanish island of Majorca.

Kuehne + Nagel ranks No. 7 on the Transport Topics Top 100 list of the largest logistics companies in North America and No. 12 on the TT Top 50 list of the largest global freight companies. CMA CGM ranks No. 6, Maersk ranks No. 7, MSC ranks No. 9 and Hapag-Lloyd ranks No. 17 on the global freight list.