|
Björgólfur Thor Björgólfsson (born 19 March 1967 in Reykjavík, Iceland), known internationally as Thor Bjorgolfsson and colloquially in Iceland as Bjöggi, is an Icelandic businessman and entrepreneur, and former chairman of the financial firm Straumur-Burðarás and chairman of investment firm Novator Partners. Björgólfur was the first Icelander to join ''Forbes'' magazine ==Early and family life== Björgólfur Thor is heir to a long family legacy in Icelandic business and politics. His great-grandfather was the legendary Danish-born Icelandic entrepreneur Thor Jensen, who helped to introduce the term "big business" to the country in the early years of the twentieth century.〔()〕 The eighth of Thor's eleven children was Margrét Þorbjörg Thors Hallgrímsson, whose daughter Þóra Hallgrímsson had Björgólfur Thor as her only child by her third husband Björgólfur Guðmundsson. Þóra Hallgrímsdóttir, Björgúlfs Thor mother, was married to George Rockwell, founder of the American Nazi party. Björgólfur Thor has often emphasised this, for example by adapting for his company Novator the old logo of Eimskip, which Thor had originally designed for his company Kveldúlfur hf,〔Guðmundur Magnússon, ''Thorsararnir: auður – völd – örlög'' (Reykjavík: Almenna bókafélagið, 2005), p. 354〕 and through his association with the biographical documentary ''Thor's Saga'' by Ulla Boje Rasmussen, which draws parallels between Thor Jensen and Björgólfur Thor. Björgólfur Thor grew up in the Reykjavík suburb of Vesturbær.〔Jón G. Hauksson, 'Björgólfur Thor og Jón Tetzchner: Íslendingar eiga tvo leiðtoga í 237 manna hópi „Ungra leiðtoga" sem taka þátt í verkefninu Forum of Young Global Leaders', ''Frjáls verslun'', 67.1 (2005), 16--22 (p. 18); ISSN: 1017-3544.〕 A sketch of Björgólfur Thor's early life is offered by Ármann Þorvaldsson: :His rare self-confidence made him stand out. He was immensely physically strong and bench pressed over 450 pounds. He was an entrepreneur from early on, and by the age of 11 he was delivering newspapers in the early hours of the morning. A year later he was a delivery boy at the University of Iceland and, at 13, was running his own home video delivery service. While still in high school, he was running a nightclub in Reykjavík and organised the first Oktoberfest beer festival in Iceland. After high school, he studied business in New York. Fluent in several languages, and with an unusual ability to both blend in and stand out, he embodied Iceland's internationalism.〔Armann Thorvaldsson, ''Frozen Assets: How I Lived Iceland's Boom and Bust'' (Chichester: Wiley, 2009), pp. 64-65.〕 Björgólfur Thor Björgólfsson chose to go to the United States in 1986 when his father Björgólfur Guðmundsson's bankrupt firm, Hafskip, was embroiled in a financial scandal; the scandal may have arisen from the efforts of Hafskip's main competitor Eimskip and its allied political party, the Independence Party, to reduce competition, and the events probably had a considerable effect on the young Björgólfur Thor.〔Roger Boyes, ''Meltdown Iceland: Lessons on the World Financial Crisis from a Small Bankrupt Island'' (New York: Bloomsbury, 2009), pp. 64-66.〕 At times he has presented his subsequent business activities as an effort to regain his and his father's reputations and pay their opponents back.〔E.g. Kroll, Luisa, 'Thor's Saga', ''Forbes Global'', 8.5 (2005), 78.〕 Graduating from the prestigious Commercial College of Iceland in 1987, he completed a B.S. in Marketing at the Leonard N Stern School of Business at New York University in 1991.〔Guðmundur Hálfdanarson, ''Historical Dictionary of Iceland'', 2nd edn, Historical Dictionaries of Europe, 66 (Lanham, Maryland: The Scarecrow Press, 2008), p. 21 (s.v. ''BJÖRGÓLFSSON, BJÖGÓLFUR THOR (1967-- )''); Peter Lee, `Landsbanki's new masters take control', ''Euromoney'', vol. 33 issue 403 (November 2002), pp. 34--47.〕 On returning to Iceland, Björgólfur Thor became an events manager at Reykjavík's then two biggest clubs: Tunglið and Skuggabarinn. At this time he met and married the filmmaker Kristín Ólafsdóttir, with whom he has three children, the first of whom was born in 2005.〔"Where have all the billionaires gone?", ''IceNews: News from the Nordics'' (16 June 2009), http://www.icenews.is/2009/06/16/where-have-all-the-billionaires-gone/; Yves Smith, 'Ragnarok - Iceland and the "Doom of the Gods" ', ''The Automatic Earth'' (16 December 2013), http://www.theautomaticearth.com/ragnarok-iceland-doom-gods-2/; Roger Boyes, ''Meltdown Iceland: Lessons on the World Financial Crisis from a Small Bankrupt Island'' (New York: Bloomsbury, 2009), p. 66; Louisa Kroll, 'Thor's Saga', ''Forbes'', 3/28/2005, http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2005/0328/138.html.〕 They currently live in London, United Kingdom. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Björgólfur Thor Björgólfsson」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|