Robert Lynn, the last surviving founder of the DHL Worldwide Express network, has died in Seattle after a brief illness. He was 78.

Mr Lynn was born in Bulgaria and raised in Vienna before emigrating to the United States in 1939. The 'L' in DHL, he founded the company in 1969 with partners Adrian Dalsey and Larry Hillblom as an air-courier service ferrying bills of lading from Honolulu to San Francisco to speed up processing of inbound ocean freight before vessels arrived in US mainland ports.