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77-454: The Emil Schwarzhaupt Foundation, Wenner-Gren Foundation, and the University of Chicago provided some financial support for the meeting. After exchanging opinions that ranged over many aspects of Indian affairs, the conference created a Declaration of Indian Purpose , the first major, collective statement on tribal self-determination. Representatives from the conference formally presented

154-658: A brief romance at sea, they traveled to London, where they married on 14 December 1909 before traveling on to Berlin where she would complete her studies. Wenner-Gren died of cancer while staying at the Red Cross Hospital in Stockholm. Wenner-Gren also founded and endowed The Viking Fund in 1941, an organization supporting anthropological research. In 1941, the endowment funded the Wenner-Gren Aeronautical Research Laboratory, now called

231-577: A controlling stake in L.M. Ericsson & Co., Sweden's leading phone company. He controlled about 50% of the world market in iron ore and cellulose. He 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

308-515: A director he went to jail for 10 months after Ivar's death. In 1911 and 1912, the Kreuger family match factories in Kalmar , Fredriksdal and Mönsterås , run by his father Ernst Kreuger, uncle Fredrik Kreuger and his brother Torsten Kreuger, encountered financial problems. Kreuger was then advised by his banker Oscar Rydbeck to turn the factories into a stock corporation in order to raise more capital. This

385-431: A few years, Kreuger & Toll was seen as the best building company in Sweden and one of the top firms in all of Europe. Within six years after its incorporation, Kreuger & Toll earned annual profits of around $ 200,000 and was paying a substantial dividend of 15%. In 1917, the company was split into two separate companies: Kreuger & Toll Construction AB, with the majority of shares owned by Paul Toll. Ivar Kreuger

462-570: A fortune from his early insight that the industrial vacuum cleaner could be adapted for domestic use. Soon after the First World War he persuaded the Swedish lighting company (called Lux at the time, but with his suggestion to rename it to Electrolux ) for which he then worked (securing the contract to floodlight the opening ceremony of the Panama Canal , among other successes), to buy the patent to

539-559: A founder of NCAI, in order to discuss a legislative program suggested by the Declaration of Indian Purpose. Axel Wenner-Gren Axel Lennart Wenner-Gren (5 June 1881 – 24 November 1961) was a Swedish entrepreneur and one of the wealthiest men in the world during the 1930s. He was born on 5 June 1881 in Uddevalla , a town on the west coast of Sweden. He was the fourth of six children (four girls and two boys) born to Leonard and

616-410: A gold mine, and pulp and industrial companies, besides his many match companies. Many of them have survived to this day. Kreuger & Toll, for example, was composed of bona fide businesses, and there were others like it. Another biographer called Kreuger a "genius and swindler", and John Kenneth Galbraith wrote that he was the " Leonardo of larcenists". Kreuger's financial empire collapsed during

693-406: A home vacuum cleaner. He asked that instead of compensating him in cash, he would receive company stock based on the sales of the vacuum cleaner. The Electrolux cleaner was so successful that by the early 1930s, Wenner-Gren had become the majority owner of Electrolux, and the firm was a leading brand in both vacuum cleaner and refrigerator technology. Wenner-Gren also diversified his interests into

770-583: A maternal uncle. During this time, he learned English , French , and German at the local Berlitz school , and music at the local YMCA . In 1902, at the age of 21, he left Sweden to further his studies in Germany. He first studied in the university town of Greifswald , where he took some summer courses before moving on to Berlin, where he studied at the Berliner Handelsakademie, from which he graduated early. After some difficulty, he found work with

847-590: A new way of thinking in the Swedish match industry with large scale production facilities as well as ideas to increase efficiency in production, administration, distribution, and marketing. He managed to unite the Swedish match industry as well as the major match companies in Norway and Finland. With this new company structure the match industry in Scandinavia became a major competitor to large manufacturers elsewhere. Ivar's methods resembled those John D. Rockefeller used in

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924-453: A particular date Kreuger & Toll would give the client a partial refund of $ 1,200 (about $ 18,000 in today's currency) for each late day. It is noteworthy that Kreuger & Toll's entire capital would have covered just two days of being late. The client, in turn, agreed to pay a bonus for every day the building was finished before the due date. Kreuger & Toll finished early and subsequently earned completion bonuses for every project. Within

1001-424: A price of $ 94.50 for each $ 100 of principal amount. Investors paid $ 94.50 in return for the right to receive interest of $ 6.50 per year for 20 years (6.5 percent of the hundred dollars principal amount.). The deal raised a total of $ 14,175,000, i.e. 94.5 percent of $ 15 million. Kreuger invented another financial instrument, which continues to be used and is nowadays known as American depositary receipts . That issue

1078-521: A railway north from Prince George into the untapped Peace River , Rocky Mountain Trench and eventually Alaska . Parts of the railway were built by the Pacific Great Eastern Railway after Wenner-Gren's death, including the needless Fort Nelson branch, yet the meeting produced outcomes lasting to this day. The interest in the north spurred a spate of mega-industrial projects in the region:

1155-446: Is more vocal, just over 2% of companies issue restricted shares. Ivar and Lee Higginson & Co., his investment banker in the USA, decided to have International Match issue new securities called convertible gold debentures. "Debenture" is a debt instrument not secured by physical collateral or assets. They were issued to mature in 20 years and they were payable in either dollars or gold, at

1232-601: Is only customary to consolidate the assets and liabilities of companies in such a balance sheet when a substantial majority of the outstanding shares are owned by the parent company. Where less than such a majority is owned, the shares are included as investments." This invention gained rapid acceptance by others, e.g. Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers . The former issued 250 million dollars' worth of complex securities (equivalent to about $ 4.4 billion in 2023 dollars) in 1929. Lehman issued similar obligations, which immediately rose 30 percent. Enron used them extensively and in

1309-443: Is the case with Google for instance where they carry ten times more voting power than the A Shares. As already stated, these types of shares are used to this day although, unlike in Kreuger's time, there are often restrictions in some markets and/or jurisdictions nowadays. The New York Stock Exchange , for example, allows companies to list dual-class voting shares. Once shares are listed, however, companies are not allowed to reduce

1386-528: The Bennett Dam flooding vast valleys, gas pipelines and plants at Taylor, coal mines and pulp mills. In late 1909, while returning from a trip to America on board a trans-Atlantic liner, he met Marguerite Gauntier Liggett who had been born on 15 October 1891 in Kansas City, Missouri . She was traveling with her sister, actress Gene Gauntier , to Europe to complete her musical training as an opera singer. After

1463-570: The Great Depression . The Price Waterhouse autopsy of his financial empire stated: "The manipulations were so childish that anyone with but a rudimentary knowledge of bookkeeping could see the books were falsified." In March 1932, he was found dead in the bedroom of his flat in Paris. The police concluded that he had committed suicide, but decades later, his brother Torsten claimed that he had been murdered, which spawned some controversial literature on

1540-589: The Stock Market Crash of 1929 turned out to be a major factor in exposing his accounting that ultimately proved fatal to both him and his empire. In the spring of 1930, he visited the United States and gave a lecture about the situation in world economics at the Industrial Club of Chicago with the title "The transfer problem and its importance to the United States". He was invited by President Hoover to

1617-590: The Weizmann Institute in Israel. In exchange, Wenner-Gren received several honorary titles. Among Wenner-Gren's other interests were monorail train systems. His company, ALWEG , built the original Disneyland Monorail System in 1959 and the Seattle Center Monorail in 1962. Wenner-Gren continued his fascination with speculative railway projects, as he collaborated with Canadian W.A.C. Bennett to build

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1694-598: The Wenner-Gren Laboratory at the University of Kentucky . The lab has since changed its focus to Biomedical Engineering . The Viking fund was later renamed the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research . (On pp. 21–22, points to Leifland 1989 as conclusive evidence that Wenner-Gren's blacklisting was a miscarriage of justice). Ivar Kreuger Ivar Kreuger ( Swedish: [ˈǐːvar ˈkry̌ːɡɛr] ; 2 March 1880 – 12 March 1932)

1771-548: 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 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. In

1848-602: The forestry industry in northern Sweden and planned to become head of a cellulose cartel . He also attempted to create a telephone monopoly in Sweden. After founding the pulp manufacturer SCA , in 1929 Kreuger was able to acquire the majority shares in the telephone company Ericsson ; the mining company Boliden (gold); major interests in the ball bearing manufacturer SKF ; the bank Skandinaviska Kreditaktiebolaget and others. Abroad he acquired Deutsche Unionsbank in Germany and Union de Banques à Paris in France, often with

1925-443: The "Match King". Kreuger's financial empire has been described by one biographer as a Ponzi scheme , based on the supposedly fantastic profitability of his match monopolies. However, in a Ponzi scheme early investors are paid dividends from their own money or that of subsequent investors. Although Kreuger did this to some extent, he also controlled many legitimate and often very profitable businesses, and owned banks, real estate,

2002-774: The Allied Navies at the site of the sinking of the liner SS  Athenia on the first day of the war. Wenner-Gren's yacht Southern Cross rescued over three hundred survivors of the sinking and transferred some to nearby Allied ships and others continued to the U.S. In the 1950s, Wenner-Gren also got involved in the early computer business. For a railroad project connecting California with Alaska , he got in touch with Glenn Hagen , previously an engineer with Northrop Aircraft , who had founded Logistics Research in Redondo Beach outside Los Angeles, developing computers based on magnetic drum memory . In November 1952, Wenner-Gren helped

2079-739: The Bahamas was used to fund the Nazis and his friendship with Göring as potential proof of his private support for the Nazis. A disconsolate Wenner-Gren retired to his estate in The Bahamas , in Hog Island (now Paradise Island ), where he resumed his friendship with the islands' governor , the Duke of Windsor , and former King of the United Kingdom , Edward VIII . Early in the war his rumored friendship with Göring and

2156-509: The German subsidiary of Alfa Laval Separator where he developed skills as a salesman, before quitting in 1904 to work selling agricultural machinery near Stuttgart which, with financial support from his father, had become his first financial enterprise. In 1908, he traveled to America where he learned about engines for agricultural use, returning to Europe the same year. While in Vienna in 1908 he saw

2233-612: The German sympathies of the Duke led first the Americans and, following their lead, the British, to place him on an economic blacklist , enabling them to freeze his assets in Nassau . There proved to be little or no foundation to their suspicions that Wenner-Gren was a Nazi agent, notwithstanding the appearance of his steam yacht Southern Cross (the world's largest at the time) along with ships from

2310-461: The Santo vacuum cleaner in the shop of Gustaf Paalen who had exclusive rights to distribute them throughout Europe. After initially failing to become a European distributor for the Santo vacuum cleaner in his own right, he entered into a partnership with Paalen, purchasing a twenty percent interest in the company. Earlier in his life he notably collaborated with Fredrik Ljungström . Wenner-Gren amassed

2387-602: The United States, and together with Lee, Higginson & Co. in New York, formed the International Match Corporation . This group eventually came to control almost 75% of the world production in matches. From 1925 to 1930, years when many countries in Europe were suffering after the First World War , Kreuger's companies gave loans to governments to speed up reconstruction. As a security, the governments would grant him

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2464-400: The acquired company's own money. These maneuvers were made both necessary and possible by his invention, decades ahead of his time, of Enron-style financial engineering , which reported profits when there were none and paid out ever increasing dividends by attracting new investment and/or looting the treasury of a newly acquired company. By 1931, Kreuger controlled some 200 companies. However,

2541-481: The bankruptcy. The collection in Stockholm comprised 88 original paintings, among them 19 by Anders Zorn and a great number by old masters from the Netherlands. The New York collection included original paintings by Rembrandt and Anthony van Dyck . Kreuger became the major shareholder when the Swedish film company AB Svensk Filmindustri (SF) was founded in 1919 and because of that, sometimes met celebrities from

2618-410: The common shares into two classes. Each class would have the same claim to dividends and profits, but the B shares would carry only 1/1000 of a vote, compared to one vote for each A share. In this way Ivar could double the size of his capital, while diluting his control by just a fraction of a percent. Presently such shares are sometimes called A Shares with the B Shares having more voting power, as

2695-546: The company to incorporate. He soon controlled the company and renamed it ALWAC (the Axel L. Wenner-Gren Automatic Computer). ALWAC I was used in 1953, ALWAC II and ALWAC III in 1954, ALWAC III-E in 1955. In 1956 and 1957, the model ALWAC III-E was considered a competitor to the IBM 650 , having fewer parts and good economy, but no more than 30 units seem to have been delivered. Soon after this, magnetic drum machines were made obsolete by

2772-469: The construction business also included a definite commitment to finish the building on time. Hitherto the financial risk of delays were assumed by the clients. Kreuger & Toll was the first firm in Europe to commit to finish projects by a fixed date, thus shifting the risk to the builder, who after all was in the best position to reduce delays. When Kreuger won the contract to build a six-story "skyscraper", he promised that if construction wasn't finished by

2849-591: The daughter in Stockholm and brought her back to Denmark. Shortly thereafter Ingeborg, without notifying the authorities or police, went down to Denmark and brought the daughter back to Sweden by hiring a private fishing boat in Denmark that took them over Öresund to Sweden. The new period with Kreuger lasted until around 1928; after that they just met occasionally. The last time they met was in November 1931, just before Kreuger started on his final trip to America. Eberth received

2926-645: The declaration to President John F. Kennedy in a ceremony at the White House on August 5, 1962. The spirit of self-determination expressed in the document was a cornerstone of Native activism in the years that followed, including the Red Power movement and the expansion of Native American gaming . After the White House gathering, the Indians met with Vice President Lyndon Johnson , Senator Sam J. Ervin, Jr. , and Congressman Ben Reifel , himself of Lakota Indian ancestry and

3003-540: The end of 1907, he returned to Sweden with the goal of introducing the new methods in both countries at the same time. At that time, one of the experts in Sweden in concrete-steel constructions was his cousin Henrik Kreüger working at KTH in Stockholm. In May 1908, Kreuger formed the construction firm Kreuger & Toll in Sweden with the engineer Paul Toll , at that time working for the construction company Kasper Höglund AB, and his cousin Henrik Kreüger , working at

3080-594: The entire match industry in Sweden, including all the major companies that manufactured the production machines used in the factories. The total number of employees working in match production in Sweden in 1917 was around 9000. It also had control over major companies supplying the raw material for the match industry. During this time Kreuger also acquired the largest match manufacturing companies in Norway ( Bryn and Halden ) and in Finland ( Wiborgs and Kekkola ). However, Kreuger not only "acquired" companies but also introduced

3157-425: The faculties of mechanical and civil engineering, at the age of 20. Ivar Kreuger never married, but lived for many years in different periods with Ingeborg Eberth, family name Hässler, born in Stockholm, who worked as a physical therapist in Stockholm. They met for the first time in Stockholm in 1913. According to the book she wrote after Kreuger's death in 1932, he was not interested in marriage or children and

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3234-490: The faculty of civil engineering at KTH , as a consulting engineer for the company. In Germany, he formed the company Deutsche Kahneisengesellschaft together with a colleague from his time in America, Anders Jordahl. 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, Kreuger held several lectures and wrote an illustrated article on

3311-447: The film industry. In June 1924, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks were invited by SF to Stockholm and were guided around the Stockholm archipelago in Kreuger's motor yacht Loris . A five-minute film sequence of this occasion is stored in SF's film archive. Pickford, Fairbanks, Kreuger, Charles Magnusson (the manager for SF), Greta Garbo and various SF employees appear in the film. After

3388-465: The formation of the Standard Oil Trust transforming dozens of struggling factories into a strong and profitable monopoly. The methods had become illegal in the USA because of anti-trust laws , but were not against the law in Sweden at the time. A German chemist had invented phosphorus matches in 1832 but they were dangerous because the yellow phosphorus used was poisonous and because it was in

3465-642: The general manager and major share holder. He controlled it with a tight grip. The board of directors consisted of Ivar, his father, Paul Toll and two very close colleagues. After Ivar got involved in his father's match factories in Kalmar, he became more focused on "constructing" new companies or taking control of other corporations - usually paying with his own securities instead of cash - rather than buildings and bridges. Thus, by 1927, Ivar had bought banks, mining companies, railways, timber and paper firms, film distributors, real estate in several European cities as well as

3542-399: The holder's option. These bonds gave investors the right to receive annual interest payments of 6.5 percent from International Match, which was an attractive rate at the time. Finally, these debentures were convertible, which meant that they could be converted into shares. If International Match performed well and the value of the shares increased, investors could switch from the debentures to

3619-642: The introduction of the magnetic core memory . By 1956 the number of employees tripled to over 300 and the company was relocated to an industrial park in Hawthorne, California . The appearance of the transistor in the electronics industry in 1957 was a financial shock for all vacuum tube computer makers and by 1958 ALWAC in Hawthorne closed and its employees, with the help of Wenner-Gren himself, were successfully hired by Litton Industries and Autonetics and several smaller electronics companies. The follow-up ALWAC 800

3696-402: The larger one. It was his first big venture in inflating values, which became his prime tactic thereafter. One of the main designers behind this operation, besides Ivar, was his banker Rydbeck. The total number of shares in the new company was 450,000. Ivar Kreuger personally owned 223,000 shares and his new holding company, Kreuger & Toll Holding AB, 60,000. This company group now covered

3773-459: The last two. The use of debt in addition to equity is called leverage and it magnifies both gains and losses. With respect to selling shares, he invented dual class ownership shares since he did not want to lose control of his companies. He called the class of shares with reduced voting power B shares. One of Kreuger's biographers, Frank Partnoy , called it "an ingenious piece of financial engineering". Ivar began with Swedish Match where he divided

3850-508: The lighting of stoves and gas appliances among other uses, and therefore demand for them was highly inelastic , meaning that a monopolist could raise prices (and hence profits) significantly without much affecting the quantity sold. By expanding the Swedish Match company through acquisition of government-created monopolies, the Swedish company became the world's largest match manufacturer. Kreuger set up an affiliate to Kreuger & Toll AB in

3927-425: The match head and thus could easily light by accident. The Swedes improved on the design by using a safer red phosphorus, which they put on the striking surface of the matchbox. They called them "safety matches". They made Sweden the leading exporter of matches and made matches the most important Swedish export. It should be remembered that in the early part of the 20th century matches were a necessity for smoking and

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4004-511: The match monopoly in their country. This means that Kreuger gained a monopoly in match production, sales, or distribution, or a complete monopoly. The monopoly agreements differed from country to country. The capital was raised to a large extent through loans from Swedish and American banks, combined with issuing a large amount of participating debentures. Kreuger also often moved money from one corporation he controlled to another. Kreuger did not limit himself to matches, but gained control of most of

4081-412: The midst of the growing panic investors went crazy for the issue and promised to buy 28 million dollars of the new securities. And this happened two days after Black Monday in 1929. The second Poland agreement also contained some extraordinary protection for International Match including a binary foreign exchange option, a kind of derivative contract, to protect International Match from any declines in

4158-453: The more valuable shares. The convertible feature made these securities particularly attractive: they have both downside protection (because in the case of bankruptcy the bond holders were paid before the shareholders) and upside potential. In other words, the best of both worlds. "Ivar and Lee Higginson had designed their first financial mousetrap." Ivar's popularity helped Lee Higginson sell $ 15 million of International Match gold debentures, at

4235-625: The most famous, Svalan ( Swallow ), built at Lidingö in 1928, a 37 ft, 4.9 ton motor yacht, equipped with a V12, 31.9 liter Hispano-Suiza engine from the US company Wright, with 650 HP output, capable of more than 50 knots (≈ 57 mph). A replica of the boat has been built. He had a large private library in both his apartments in Stockholm and New York and quite a large art collection. The paintings were sold at different auctions held in September 1932, as all of Kreuger's private assets were incorporated into

4312-453: The much younger Alice Wenner-Gren (née Albin); only three of the children survived to adulthood: Axel, his oldest sister (Anna), and his younger brother (Hugo). His father owned a farm and exported timber to England, which made the family wealthy. Having spent his school years in Uddevalla, Wenner-Gren moved to Gothenburg where he was employed for five years in the spice importing company of

4389-617: The news about his death in Paris on March 12, 1932, from newspaper headlines the day after. Kreuger had private apartments in Stockholm, New York, Paris, and Warsaw , and a country place used during the summer season on the private island Ängsholmen in the archipelago of Stockholm. On business tours in Europe, he preferred to meet his business associates in Paris and then stayed in his flat at 5, Av. Victor Emanuel III (today named Avenue Franklin-D.-Roosevelt  [ fr ] ). He owned several specially designed motor yachts , among them Elsa built in 1906, Loris (1913), Tärnan (1925), and

4466-476: The ownership of newspapers, banks and arms manufacturers, and acquired many of the holdings of the disgraced safety-match tycoon Ivar Kreuger . In Mexico in the 1930s, he was in economic alliance with Maximino Ávila Camacho , strongman of the Mexican state of Puebla, whose brother Manuel Ávila Camacho became President of Mexico in 1940. Wenner-Gren was reported to be a friend of Hermann Göring , whose first wife

4543-413: The parent company's financial statements. Some of these entities were more or less secret. The associated debt, called "off balance sheet obligations", didn't appear in any financial statements of the companies Ivar controlled other than in summary form, if at all. Albert D. Berning of the firm Ernst & Ernst, International Match's auditor, rationalized it at the shareholder's meeting in 1926. He said "it

4620-412: The right to appoint the managing director of Garanta who alone was entitled to sign for the company. On or after October 1, 1929, International Match Corporation had the right to acquire 60 percent of the shares at par. This option term secured both initial control over Garanta and the right to own a majority of Garanta's shares in the future. This term means that details of an enterprise do not appear in

4697-722: The same year, the total loans made by Swedish banks were barely 4 billion SEK. Obtaining a monopoly for the production and/or sale of matches in return for loans to governments was, in its essence, not a new way of doing business. Such schemes had been around for a long time (e.g. the Mississippi Bubble of John Law , and the South Sea Bubble ) but Kreuger was very creative inventing new ways of financing business, while making sure that he kept control of his companies. Kreuger financed his activities by selling shares and bonds of his companies as well as through large bank loans, mainly

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4774-435: The start of the 20th century, Kreuger spent seven years traveling and working abroad as an engineer in the USA, Mexico, South Africa and other countries, but spent most of the time in the US. In South Africa, he ran a restaurant for a short time together with his friend Anders Jordahl , but they soon sold the restaurant. At an early stage, he came in contact with the patented Kahn System for concrete-steel constructions that

4851-495: The subject in a leading engineering magazine, Teknisk Tidskrift . The new technology was a success and the firm won several prestigious contracts, such as the construction of the Stockholm Olympic Stadium (1911–12); the foundation work for the new Stockholm City Hall (1912–13) and the department store NK (1913–14) in Stockholm. The chief engineer behind these advanced projects was Henrik Kreüger. Innovation in

4928-543: The subject. Kreuger was born in Kalmar , the eldest son of Ernst August Kreuger, an industrialist in the match industry in that city, and his wife Jenny Emelie Kreuger ( née Forssman). He had five siblings. At school, Ivar skipped ahead two classes by taking private lessons. At age 16, he began studies at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm , from which he graduated with combined master's degrees covering both

5005-521: The value of the dollar: "International Match Corporation shall have the right to obtain payment of interest in Dutch guilders or US dollars according to its choice and for all such payments one dollar shall be counted as 2½ guilders." To retain control of Garanta , a company established to facilitate his deals, Ivar created another innovative financial provision, which meant that during the first four years until October 1, 1929, International Match Corporation had

5082-514: The voting rights of the existing shares or issue a new class of superior voting shares. There is a wide range of dual-class share structures and their use between countries. In Canada, for example, an estimated 20% to 25% of companies currently listed on the TSX make use of some form of dual-class share structure or special voting rights. In the United States on the other hand, where rules on dual-class shares are much more restrictive and investor opposition

5159-460: Was a Swede, and in the late 1930s convinced himself that he could avert the coming world war by acting as a conduit between Göring and the British and American governments. His efforts proved unsuccessful, with all parties regarding him as a self-promoting nuisance without much influence on the plans of the Nazi regime. However, others are suspicious of his role in the war, citing how (his) original Bank of

5236-547: Was a Swedish civil engineer, financier, entrepreneur and industrialist. In 1908, he co-founded the construction company Kreuger & Toll Byggnads AB , which specialized in new building techniques. By aggressive investments and innovative financial instruments, he built a global match and financial empire. Between the two world wars, he negotiated match monopolies with European, Central American and South American governments, and finally controlled between two thirds and three quarters of worldwide match production, becoming known as

5313-524: Was a failed design that never went beyond prototype, using not only core memory but also magnetic logic (a combination of semiconductor diodes and magnetic cores, cf. Hewitt Crane ), and presold contracts nearly ruined the company. Development was transferred to Sweden in 1958. The next model, named Wegematic 1000, a slight upgrade of the III-E, was shipped in 1960. Only a dozen were delivered and half of them were give-aways to universities, including one unit for

5390-594: Was appointed the general manager. Ivar became a member of the board. A merger between this company with several other small match companies in Sweden, the company AB Svenska Förenade Tändsticksfabriker was founded in 1913 with Ivar Kreuger as the general manager. Later, by merging with the largest match company in Sweden, AB Jönköping-Vulcan , Svenska Tändsticks AB ( Swedish Match ) was founded in 1917. Ivar had originally tried to convince AB Jönköping-Vulcan to merge in December 1912, but they had not been interested as Vulcan

5467-519: Was around $ 10 million ($ 170 million in 2023 dollars) and Ivar owned about half of it, held all senior positions and controlled the board of directors. The Swedish banker Oscar Rydbeck became a close associate and an important teacher for Ivar in the financing business. He worked for Kreuger & Toll as a consultant from around 1912 until the Kreuger Crash in 1932 and was a member of its board of directors. For not having carried out his duties as

5544-404: Was called Kreuger & Toll "American Certificates". American investors had never seen an investment like this. It was part bond, part preferred stock, and part profit sharing option. The certificates enabled investors to gain exposure to a foreign company that had been paying dividends of 25 percent. It would be backed by the largest private loan to a foreign government (i.e. Germany) ever. Even in

5621-405: Was exploited by Julius Kahn's Trussed Concrete Steel Company , when working for different engineering companies, among them The Consolidated Engineering & Construction Co. and Purdy & Henderson in New York. This new technique had not been introduced in Sweden at that time. In 1907, he managed to get the representative rights for the system for both the Swedish and the German markets, and at

5698-420: Was not among the board members in the construction company. How much of Paul Toll's company Ivar Kreuger owned has not been revealed—just that Paul Toll owned 60% in 1917 and, around 1930, 66% of the construction company. Kreuger & Toll Construction Co. has never shown up in any Kreuger & Toll Holding organisation charts. Kreuger & Toll Holding became his financial holding company, with Ivar Kreuger as

5775-411: Was the dominating match company in Sweden. Ivar 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 Jönköping-Vulcan to accept the merger. He 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

5852-493: Was the starting point for the reformation of the Swedish match industry as well as the major match companies in Norway and Finland. The goal was to get control of the entire match industry in Scandinavia. With the family match factories as the base, Kreuger first founded the Swedish corporation AB Kalmar-Mönsterås Tändsticksfabrik in 1912. His father, Ernst, and uncle Fredrik, became the major shareholders and his brother Torsten

5929-406: Was very much focused on his business. She broke off the relationship in 1917 and moved to Denmark, where she married a Danish engineer with the name Eberth. They had a daughter in 1919, Grete Eberth (later to be an actress in Stockholm, married name Mac Laury). After some years, however, she divorced Eberth and moved back to Stockholm with her daughter, reuniting with Kreuger. Mr. Eberth once kidnapped

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