BW Group

BW Group Limited

Type	Private
Industry	Shipping
Headquarters	Oslo and Singapore
Area served	Global
Key people	Chairman: Andreas Sohmen-Pao; CEO: Carsten Mortensen
Number of employees	4,500 (2016)
Website	www.bw-group.com

BW Group is a global maritime group involved in shipping, floating gas infrastructure and deepwater oil & gas production. The company has a fleet of over 165 vessels. The group was founded by Sir Yue-Kong Pao in Hong Kong in 1955 as World-Wide Shipping. In 2003, the company acquired Bergesen d.y. ASA, Norway's largest shipping company, which was founded in 1935 by Sigval Bergesen the Younger. In 2005, the business was re-branded as BW. With its LNG and LPG fleets combined, BW Group operates the world's largest gas shipping fleet of more than 70 large gas vessels, including three FSRUs (floating storage and regasification units). BW Offshore operates the world's second largest floating oil and gas production fleet (FPSOs), with more than 15 units in the US, Brazil, Mexico, West Africa, North Sea, and Australasia. BW's fleet also includes crude oil supertankers, refined oil tankers, chemical tankers and dry bulk carriers.

BW Group comprises BW Offshore, BW LPG, BW Pacific, BW LNG, BW VLCC, BW Chemical Tankers, BW Dry Cargo and BW Fleet Management. BW Offshore and BW LPG are listed on the Oslo Stock Exchange.

The BW group includes two long-standing shipping businesses: World-Wide Shipping (founded by Sir Yue-Kong Pao) and Bergesen d.y. which was acquired by World-Wide in 2003.

In the late 1970s, two British Hongs were taken over by Chinese entrepreneurs: Hutchison Whampoa Ltd by Li Ka-Shing, and Kowloon Wharf by Yue-Kong Pao. Y.K. Pao was a native from Ningbo, Zhejiang province who came to Hong Kong in 1949 and acquired an aging ship to establish the Worldwide Shipping Company in 1955. At its peak in 1979 World-Wide had 204 ships totalling 20,500,000 tonnes deadweight (DWT). When the shipping downturn started in 1978, World-Wide sold tonnage while prices were still reasonable, paying off debt and building cash resources. In less than five years the fleet had halved in size, allowing World-Wide to avoid the crises suffered by many shipping companies.

In 1989, Pao passed on his interest in World-Wide to his eldest daughter, Anna Sohmen-Pao, shortly before his death in 1991. World-Wide was ranked as the sixth largest shipping fleet (number of vessels) in the world in 2004 and has been chaired by Helmut Sohmen, Pao's eldest daughter's husband, since 1986.