How Carl built the fortune
Carl Bennet's fortune is the product of a few large, long held ownership positions rather than a single startup. The first and most important came in 1989, when he bought Getinge, a manufacturer of sterilisation and disinfection equipment for hospitals, from the Swedish appliance group Electrolux. At the time Getinge was a modest industrial company based in the town of the same name in southwest Sweden. Bennet saw a business with loyal hospital customers and room to grow internationally.
After the purchase he ran Getinge as chief executive and, from the early 1990s, as a listed company in Stockholm, where it was introduced in 1993. The strategy was to build a broad medical technology group through acquisitions. Getinge added Arjo, a maker of patient handling and hygiene equipment, in the mid 1990s and the German surgical and intensive care equipment company Maquet in 2000. Later deals brought in cardiovascular and cardiac assist products, turning Getinge into a supplier of operating tables, ventilators, heart lung machines and infection control systems to hospitals worldwide.
Bennet kept his company, Carl Bennet AB, as the largest shareholder throughout. He used the same patient approach elsewhere, acquiring control of the dental products distributor Lifco in 1998 and building positions in the printing and logistics company Elanders. Lifco in particular has grown into a highly profitable acquisitive group, and its listing in 2014 made the value of Bennet's stake visible to the market.
Companies and holdings
Carl Bennet AB is the family's private investment company. Its main listed holdings are:
- Getinge, medical technology for operating rooms, intensive care and sterilisation
- Arjo, patient handling, hospital beds and wound care equipment, spun off from Getinge in 2017
- Lifco, a group of more than one hundred niche companies in dental supplies, demolition and tools, and systems solutions
- Elanders, which provides printing, packaging and supply chain services
In each case Bennet's company holds a controlling or leading stake and has been represented on the board. He has served as chairman of several of these businesses. The portfolio also includes real estate and smaller unlisted investments.
Because all four main companies are listed in Stockholm, the value of Bennet's fortune moves with their share prices. Lifco has become the largest contributor over time, reflecting its steady stream of small acquisitions and high margins, while Getinge and Arjo are more exposed to hospital spending cycles.
Early life and career
Carl Bennet was born in August 1951 and grew up in Sweden. He studied business at the University of Gothenburg, earning a degree from its school of business, economics and law, and began his career in industry, working in management roles at Swedish companies through the 1970s and 1980s. That experience gave him a practical view of how manufacturing businesses were run and financed.
By the end of the 1980s he had the contacts and financial backing to make his own acquisition. Buying Getinge was a significant risk for an individual investor, but it turned him from a manager into an owner. Over the following decades he moved from day to day leadership into the role of chairman and principal shareholder, appointing professional chief executives while keeping influence over strategy, acquisitions and capital allocation. He has remained based in western Sweden, close to where his business interests began.
Philanthropy and public life
Bennet keeps a modest public profile and seldom gives interviews about his private wealth. His charitable giving is low key and is not channelled through a large, publicised foundation, so there is little public information about its scale. He is better known in Swedish business circles for his views on ownership than for public statements on other issues.
As an owner he is known for long holding periods and a preference for decentralised companies, a philosophy most visible at Lifco, where acquired businesses keep their own management and are expected to finance their growth from their own profits. Through his holding company he has also been a stable shareholder during difficult periods, including the product quality problems and regulatory scrutiny that Getinge faced in the United States in the 2010s, when the company had to invest heavily in fixing manufacturing processes.