Klaus-Michael Kühne, the former CEO of family-owned global logistics powerhouse Kuehne+Nagel International AG, died Sunday at the age of 89, the company announced.
Born in Hamburg, Germany, Klaus-Michael Kühne in 1958 joined the company co-founded by his grandfather 68 years earlier in Breman, Germany. In 1966, at age 29, he took over as chief executive officer of K+N Speditions-AG, as the company was called at the time. In 1974, with the internationalization of the business, both K+N and Klaus Michael moved to Switzerland. In 1979, he opened K+N’s first office in China. The company moved its headquarters to its current location in Schindellegi, Switzerland, in 1992, when he also added the chairman’s title. In 1994, Klaus-Michael took the company public on the Swiss stock exchange.
