Businessman Or Scam Artist?
Ivar Kreuger is still a bit of an enigma in history. Unlike other large scale financial scandals, Kreuger’s multi-million dollar meltdown was overshadowed by the traumatic events of the crash of 1929 and the ensuing depression. At times it seemed that he was a solid, if ruthless, businessman, and at other times he appeared every inch a scam artist. Between those times, he either built a match monopoly that overreached or orchestrated one of the biggest pyramid schemes in history. Playing with Matches Ivar Kreuger was born in Sweden in 1880. Kreuger’s schooling was in civil engineering and he easily found employment while traveling to America and other international destinations, before becoming interested in the family match factories around 1911. The match businesses were struggling, so Kreuger absorbed them into his engineering firm to consolidate the family factories into one entity. Finding that consolidation worked well, Kreuger began to make offers for other match companies, as w
