A few months after his chemotherapy, John Fentener van Vlissingen reported back to the headquarters of his travel empire BCD in Zeist in the spring of 2019. During his treatment for lymphoma, the then almost 80-year-old businessman had written a strategic plan for his companies. “I couldn’t resist,” he said a conversation with Het Financieele Dagblad.
Fentener van Vlissingen, who died on Thursday December 11, came from an illustrious entrepreneurial family. His great-grandfather Frederik Hendrik Fentener van Vlissingen founded the Steenkolen Handelsvereeniging (SHV) in 1896, which his descendants expanded into the largest non-listed company in the Netherlands with 60,000 employees.
His father Jan and his two brothers Frits and Paul (both deceased in 2006) made a career in the family business. But John Fentener van Vlissingen was only a supervisory director at SHV and used his family fortune to set up companies of his own. He said he was more interested in securities transactions. “I was passionate about the financial world, shares,” he said in the conversation with the newspaper F.D. His entrepreneurial talent made him one of the richest Dutch people. The business magazine Quote estimated his assets at 2.9 billion euros in 2025.
His success came about through trial and error. Fentener van Vlissingen started at a small Utrecht securities office that was taken over by the banking house Pierson, Heldring and Pierson. During his eleven-year stay at the bank, he founded the real estate investment fund Noro in the mid-1970s. He started, was one of the stories from his iron anecdote repertoire, with just two chairs, a table, a typewriter and a starting amount of 40,000 euros.
Because many wealthy private individuals thought it would be chic to join him, the fund grew into the largest private investment company in the country. But in the spring of 1991, angry shareholders accused him of a conflict of interest and personal enrichment. A few months later, the fund founder left as president of Noro.
Six years later, in 1997, the fund was again discredited. This time the entire supervisory board resigned. The reason: Fentener van Vlissingen’s daily involvement was greater than the council considered desirable. “We cannot function like this,” said President Chris van Veen, former minister and VNO chairman.
James Bond
Fentener van Vlissingen achieved his greatest success with the travel group BCD, which he started in 1975 and which grew into one of the largest providers of business travel in the world. With modern technology, the company focused on the business market; travelers could book their tickets with the company themselves, companies could manage the business trips of their employees and the company also became a major player in airport parking.
In 1998, BCD acquired BTI World Travel, twice its size, making the company a global player: it now has 15,000 employees in 109 countries and had a turnover of almost $23 billion in 2024. Only American Express Global Business Travel is bigger in business travel.
Travel group BCD is the largest in the film industry and has been the regular partner of, for example, Netflix and the James Bond films for years. Not only does it transport crews and film supplies; a subsidiary company ensures that the actors lack nothing during the recordings. Fentener van Vlissingen in the F.D: “They don’t call the reception of a hotel, but one of us if they have the wrong pillow. Then we ensure that the hotel brings seven pillows.”
The corona crisis had a major impact on BCD – as well as on the entire business travel industry. In the spring of 2020, the company’s turnover fell to 6 percent of pre-Covid-19 levels. To survive the crisis, BCD Travel cut approximately three thousand jobs worldwide, a fifth of the total. The travel group has since also offered its customers electronic services for virtual meetings and digital collaboration.
Fentener van Vlissingen placed other business ventures in two investment funds. His interest in SHV and his share in hotel group Intercontinental are in Boron. With Walvis, he participated in fast-growing tech companies from 2012, but he also became co-owner of the Veen Bosch & Keuning publishing group (VBK) and the Bruna bookstore formula.
In October 2025, Fentener van Vlissingen permanently resigned from BCD and Boron. Five of his nine grandchildren – children of his daughters Nicole and Brigitte and his son Robert-Jan – now have a role in the foundations that make the most important decisions in the family businesses.
Positive
Fentener van Vlissingen called himself an optimist. From its founding in 2008, he was involved in Big Improvement Day, the annual meeting on the third Tuesday of January for top leaders from Dutch business, science and government. For this brainstorm, “the positive counterpart of Budget Day”, he was happy to come from his hometown of London, he said in 2017. a conversation with de Volkskrant.
He understood little about the ‘angry white man’ and the advancing populism, he told the readers of the morning newspaper. “People abroad are jealous of the Netherlands. […] But what do we do? We complain that we sometimes get stuck in traffic jams. We have no idea what a beautiful country we live in.”
John Fentener van Vlissingen collected art. He showed a selection from his collection of old landscape drawings by Rembrandt, Ruisdael and other Dutch and Flemish masters in the Rijksmuseum in 2015. His collection of impressionists was on display at the Singer Laren in 2018. Following the latter exhibition, he gave an interview that year NRC. In it he said he was struggling with the question of what should happen to his art after his death. “Part of the family says: buy two beautiful canal houses and just start a museum. […] I have never been a big supporter of a Fentener van Vlissingen Museum. Because of that name, yes. It comes across as gaudy, I’m afraid.”
Fentener van Vlissingen was married to Marine Michèle comtesse de Pourtalès (1941). They have three children and nine grandchildren. He was 86 years old.
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