60 Facts About Ivar Kreuger

Ivar Kreuger was a Swedish civil engineer, financier, entrepreneur and industrialist.

At school, Ivar Kreuger skipped ahead two classes by taking private lessons.

Ivar Kreuger never married, but lived for many years in different periods with Ingeborg Eberth, family name Hassler, born in Stockholm, who worked as a physical therapist in Stockholm.

Ivar Kreuger broke off the relationship in 1917 and moved to Denmark, where she married a Danish engineer with the name Eberth.

The new period with Ivar Kreuger lasted until around 1928; after that they just met occasionally.

The last time they met was in November 1931, just before Ivar Kreuger started on his final trip to America.

Ivar Kreuger had private apartments in Stockholm, New York, Paris, and Warsaw, and a country place used during the summer season on the private island Angsholmen in the archipelago of Stockholm.

Ivar Kreuger had a large private library in both his apartments in Stockholm and New York and quite a large art collection.

Ivar Kreuger became the major shareholder when the Swedish film company AB Svensk Filmindustri was founded in 1919 and because of that, sometimes met celebrities from the film industry.

At that time, one of the experts in Sweden in concrete-steel constructions was his cousin Henrik Ivar Kreuger working at KTH in Stockholm.

The concrete-steel construction method of constructing buildings was not fully accepted in Sweden at that time and in order to market the new technique, Ivar Kreuger held several lectures and wrote an illustrated article on the subject in a leading engineering magazine, Teknisk Tidskrift.

Ivar Kreuger was not among the board members in the construction company.

Ivar Kreuger owned mines all over the world including the Boliden mine in Sweden, which had one of the richest gold deposits outside South Africa in addition to other minerals.

Kreuger formed Swedish Match by merging his father's business with other match factories he had quietly bought during World War I Its initial capital was around $10 million and Ivar owned about half of it, held all senior positions and controlled the board of directors.

Ivar Kreuger was then advised by his banker Oscar Rydbeck to turn the factories into a stock corporation in order to raise more capital.

Ivar Kreuger had originally tried to convince AB Jonkoping-Vulcan to merge in December 1912, but they had not been interested as Vulcan was the dominating match company in Sweden.

Ivar Kreuger then started to acquire all of the match companies as well as most of the raw material companies he could find in and around Sweden and then finally got AB Jonkoping-Vulcan to accept the merger.

Ivar Kreuger had been so persuasive in arguing for the merger that he managed to overvalue his side of the deal so that it was essentially the smaller organization taking over the larger one.

One of the main designers behind this operation, besides Ivar Kreuger, was his banker Rydbeck.

Ivar Kreuger managed to unite the Swedish match industry as well as the major match companies in Norway and Finland.

From 1925 to 1930, years when many countries in Europe were suffering after the First World War, Ivar Kreuger's companies gave loans to governments to speed up reconstruction.

Ivar Kreuger often moved money from one corporation he controlled to another.

Ivar Kreuger did not limit himself to matches, but gained control of most of the forestry industry in northern Sweden and planned to become head of a cellulose cartel.

Ivar Kreuger attempted to create a telephone monopoly in Sweden.

Ivar Kreuger was invited by President Hoover to the White House to discuss the subject and in June he was awarded the title Doctor of Business Administration by Syracuse University, where he had worked as a young chief engineer when Archbold Stadium was built there in 1907.

In 1929, at the peak of his career, the Ivar Kreuger fortune was thought to be worth 30 billion Swedish kronor, equivalent to approximately US$100 billion in 2000, and consisting of more than 200 companies.

Ivar Kreuger financed his activities by selling shares and bonds of his companies as well as through large bank loans, mainly the last two.

Ivar Kreuger called the class of shares with reduced voting power B shares.

Ivar Kreuger began with Swedish Match where he divided the common shares into two classes.

Ivar Kreuger's popularity helped Lee Higginson sell $15 million of International Match gold debentures, at a price of $94.50 for each $100 of principal amount.

Ivar Kreuger invented another financial instrument, which continues to be used and isadays known as American depositary receipts.

The associated debt, called "off balance sheet obligations", didn't appear in any financial statements of the companies Ivar Kreuger controlled other than in summary form, if at all.

Ivar Kreuger speculated with his personal funds and, especially, with the money of the corporations he controlled.

Ivar Kreuger treated most of his companies as if they were exclusively his personal property.

Ivar Kreuger frequently transferred funds from one corporation to another with little formality.

Ivar Kreuger used other people as front men to conceal his actions, for example when he acquired almost half of the outstanding shares of Diamond Match Company so as not to raise anti-trust concerns in the USA.

Ivar Kreuger's speculations were in foreign currencies, equities and derivatives and he signed loan agreements with governments not knowing where the funds would be coming from.

Ivar Kreuger made a deal with Germany for a $125 million-dollar loan with the conditions that Germany sign the Young Plan and, of course, award him a match monopoly.

Ivar Kreuger planned to issue a loan of $75m to Italy, known as the "Italian Bond" in 1930 but the deal was never completed.

In February 1932, Ivar Kreuger turned to Sveriges Riksbank for the second time in his life to support him in raising a large increase in his loans.

At that time, Ivar Kreuger was in the United States and was asked to return to Europe for a meeting with the chairman of the Riksbank, Ivar Rooth.

Ivar Kreuger had left Sweden for the last time on 23 November 1931 and returned to Europe on the ship Ile de France, arriving in Paris on 11 March 1932.

Ivar Kreuger left a sealed envelope in the room, addressed to Krister Littorin, which contained three other sealed envelopes - one addressed to his sister Britta; one to Sune Schele; and one addressed to Littorin.

In 1965, Torsten Kreuger published Sanningen om Ivar Kreuger claiming that his brother Ivar had been murdered.

Ivar Kreuger's death precipitated the Ivar Kreuger Crash which hit investors and companies worldwide, but particularly hard in the United States and Sweden.

However, while paying high dividends was definitely one of the attractions of Ivar Kreuger's companies, paying dividends to his investors did not come exclusively from new investors, which is the case in Ponzi schemes.

Ivar Kreuger frequently treated the assets of corporations he controlled as if they were his own.

Ivar Kreuger ordered a rubber stamp that would produce a facsimile should he need it in the future.

Ivar Kreuger did not use it; however, from then on he had rubber stamps made of official signatures of almost all his match deals.

When he was desperate for funds, Ivar Kreuger tried to use them claiming that they were genuine.

Yet it would be a mistake to conclude that Ivar Kreuger was nothing but a crook.

Ivar Kreuger, too, was very secretive and not only with investors.

Ivar Kreuger sold shares in the US worth 250 million dollars and transferred almost all of it to his holding company in Liechtenstein, Continental Investment Corporation.

Ivar Kreuger got the nickname "Saviour of Europe" by lending about $400 million to rebuild their shattered economies after World War I Ivar Kreuger invented new financial instruments to help him raise funds and, of course, make him money.

Indeed, many consider Ivar Kreuger to be the father of modern financial schemes.

Oscar Rydbeck, his Swedish banker, said Ivar Kreuger was the third richest man in the world.

Ivar Kreuger was a successful speculator for much of his life, earning money until shortly before the end.

Ivar Kreuger controlled many legitimate, profitable businesses, some of which still exist to this day.

At the time of his death in 1932, assets were worth about $200 million, which was half of what Ivar Kreuger claimed in financial statements.

Ivar Kreuger's rise and his downfall are mentioned by characters in the 1933 film Forgotten.