Scandinavian Minimalist

Torstein Hagen was 54 years old, recovering from prostate cancer, and reeling from a multimillion-dollar loss in his failed takeover attempt of a large Dutch shipping company when a buddy made him an offer: Want to buy four Russian riverboats?

Hagen, a former shipping and cruise company chief executive, was born in Norway, educated at Wesleyan and Harvard Business School, and, by the mid-’90s, eager to control his own empire. Although his activist-shareholder coup in the Netherlands flamed out dramatically, he’d also sunk some money into the then-booming Russian equities market. His shares yielded $5.5 million—coincidentally, almost enough to buy those riverboats. Also coincidentally, a company he’d