Industry magnate's wife passes away

The flag on the Copenhagen headquarters of Denmark's biggest company was sunk to half-mast on Thursday morning, as the news of Emma Mc-Kinney Møller's death reached A.P. Møller-Mærsk.

Emma Mc-Kinney Møller was married to Mærsk Mc-Kinney Møller, the owner of the shipping and oil giant, for 65 years, national broadcaster DR reported.

Emma Neergaard Rasmussen was born on 8 July 1913, to a family of construction contractors. On 22 May 1940 she married Mærsk Mc-Kinney Møller, her high school sweetheart.

She later admitted that her mother-in-law had not considered her an optimal match for her son.

'My mother-in-law was unhappy that he chose me. There were so many others she would have preferred, who maybe were are bit more ... virtuous. But Mærsk didn't care about that,' she said in a portrait program on television channel TV2.

'I fell in love with her when she was a schoolgirl, and I'm still in love with her,' her husband said in the same program.

The marriage got off to a dramatic start, as the newlyweds were forced to flee Denmark's German occupation to the United States, where Møller tried to direct his shipping empire from exile throughout World War II.

The two eldest of the couple's daughters were born in the United States, while the youngest daughter was born shortly after the family's return to Denmark in 1948.

Emma Mc-Kinney Møller kept a strict vigil over the sanctity of her home, never allowing the press inside the family's doors in their stately home in the Copenhagen suburb of Charlottenlund. She rarely gave interviews.

Therefore, her letter to the editor in daily newspaper Berlingske Tidende in 1980 aroused colossal attention. In the letter, she described her family's exhausting battle to secure the rights over the North Sea oil fields, criticising the Social Democratic government for its resistance.

Her own family described her as 'taking most of the work on the home front, while providing loyal support to dad and the company'. The public knew her as the lady with the white hair and the decisive look in her eyes.

In recent years, Mærsk Mc-Kinney Møller often had to appear alone at public appearances, as his wife was plagued by arthritis, which impeded her walking.