Ivar Kreuger (; 2 March 1880 – 12 March 1932) 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 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, 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 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 the subject.
Early life
Kreuger was born in Kalmar, the eldest son of Ernst August Kreuger (1852–1946), an industrialist in the match industry in that city, and his wife Jenny Emelie Kreuger (née Forssman; 1856–1949). Ivar Kreuger had five siblings: Ingrid (born 1877), Helga (born 1878), Torsten (born 1884), Greta (born 1889) and Britta (born 1891).
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 the faculties of mechanical and civil engineering, at the age of 20.
Personal life
Ivar Kreuger never married, but lived for many years in different periods with Ingeborg Eberth (1889–1977), 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 Krueger's death in 1932, he was not interested in marriage or children and 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 1919–2002). After some years, however, she divorced Eberth and moved back to Stockholm with her daughter, reuniting with Kreuger. Mr. Eberth once kidnapped 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 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). He owned several specially designed motor yachts, among them Elsa built in 1906, Loris (1913), Tärnan (1925), and 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. A replica of the boat has been built.
