Thunholm was born in Stockholm, Sweden, the son of sea captain Nils Thunholm and his wife Ebba. He worked for AGA Paulista in São Paulo, Brazil from 1933 to 1935 before graduating from the Stockholm School of Economics in 1937. Thunholm worked at Handelsbanken in 1938 and received a master's degree in political sciences in 1941. He was an accountant at Handelsbanken in 1946 and he became deputy director of Handelsbanken in 1948 and was director there from 1951 to 1955. Thunholm was CEO of the Federation of Swedish Industries from 1955 to 1957 and of Skandinaviska Banken from 1957 to 1971. In 1969 he became chairman of the Swedish Bankers' Association and in 1971 he became chairman of the Association of Swedish Chambers of Commerce and of Stockholm's Chambers of Commerce. Following the merger of the Skandinaviska Banken with Stockholms Enskilda Bank to the Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken, he became the new bank's first CEO, which he was from 1971 to 1976. Thunholm was then chairman of the board of SEB from 1976 to 1984. In 1982 he became chairman of the Swedish National Committee of the International Chamber of Commerce. He became a member of the board of the Nordic Museum in 1959 and a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences in 1961. Thunholm became a member of the Royal Gustavus Adolphus Academy in 1967. In 1976 he became a member of the Nobel Foundation. Thunholm's reputation for integrity and fearlessness was with him all his life. He came under fire in the 1980s over revelations about the Bofors bribes, because he, as chairman of the Nobel Industriesought to have been transparent, but felt that this was a mass media inflated business, in which India put the blame on Sweden. During the 1980s, Thunholm was financier of the doctor Alf Enerström's noted newspaper campaign against Prime MinisterOlof Palme. Thunholm would later in life marry Enerström's former partner, Gio Petré. When Thunholm resigned as chairman of SEB at age 70 he had time to spare for his own writing. Thunholm had always been regarded as a well-read and with great literary interests. Now he had to show it through his own writings: in 1991 with a book on the banker Oscar Rydbeck which went bankrupt and ended up in prison in 1936, Oscar Rydbeck och hans tid, Ivar Kreuger and the memoirs Flydda tider .
Personal life
In 1939 he married May Bruzelli, the daughter of Erik Bruzelli and Signe. He is the father of Eva Thiel and art historian Görel Cavalli-Björkman, who was married to bank director Nils Cavalli-Björkman. In 2000, Thunholm married the actress Gio Petré. Thunholm died on 17 June 2006 and was buried in Lidingö Cemetery.
