Name
Ilona Herlin
Ilona Herlin
Helsinki, Finland
Finland
elevators, escalators
$1,400,000,000
1717
#1717 Billionaires 2019
Ilona Herlin is the great-granddaughter of Finnish business leader Harald Herlin, who invested in Kone Elevators in 1924.After her father's death in 2003, Ilona and her siblings discovered the will had been rewritten leaving most of the ownership in Kone to brother AnttiAngered that they had never been informed, the siblings battled for control. The dispute ended in 2005, with Kone being split in two. Antti maintained control over the elevator business while his siblings were given stakes in Cargotec, producer of machinery for heavy duty ship cargo.Niklas, one of the siblings, passed away in 2017. Three of the siblings are billionaires.
Ilona is a linguist by training and an associate professor at Helsinki University. Her research, leading to calls for a simplification of the Finnish language, has sparked debate in academia.
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