Rotterdam entrepreneur and benefactor Martijn van der Vorm has died at the age of 67. Investment company HAL announced this. He was also called the ‘sugar daddy of Rotterdam’.
In a statement, members and former members of the Supervisory Board and the Board of Directors said they were “silent, very silent” by the death of Van der Vorm. “With his enterprising and creative spirit, leadership and eye for detail, but also always for the person behind the numbers, he has made a remarkable and long-term contribution to the success of HAL, our companies and all colleagues,” it said. on the investment company’s website.
Van der Vorm was chairman of the board of directors of investment company HAL for 21 years. He was chairman of the supervisory board until May 2025. He led a retired life and lived in Monaco for the past thirty years. Throughout his life, the mysterious billionaire avoided publicity. He never gave interviews, and there are almost no photos of him in circulation.
The Van der Vorm family made a fortune with the shipping company Holland America Line (HAL). It was sold to the American cruise ship giant Carnival in 1989. With the 1.2 billion guilders this raised, the family started an investment company under the same name. In three generations they made billions.
Martijn van der Vorm in particular had an exceptionally good nose for lucrative investments. He was at the helm of the family business for twenty years. The wealthy entrepreneur mainly invested in Rotterdam.
The family distributed part of those billions through philanthropic foundations. Projects in Rotterdam such as the Boijmans Depot, Fenix Museum and the recently reopened Dutch Photo Museum were realized with the tens of millions from the Droom en Daad foundation he founded. The foundation is also contributing millions to the renovation of Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen. In addition, the debts of thousands of Rotterdam families were repaid.
But the story of the Rotterdam benefactor also has a dark side. The Van der Vorm family avoids taxes in the Netherlands on a large scale, including through letterbox companies. In 2023 did NRC investigation into the tax constructions, which are not illegal. However, it did raise questions about how desirable it is that the municipality of Rotterdam also became partly dependent on philanthropic donations resulting from assets that were used to avoid taxes on a large scale.
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