Word: kreuger
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...money, he sailed for the U.S. On the high seas Kreuger decided to fire the American imagination with a flamboyant gesture, commandeered the ship's wireless room and spent the next 24 hours dispatching business messages. Thus was born the notion of Kreuger as a dedicated, enigmatic Caesar of international finance. It was on another trip that Kreuger made his only recorded witticism. When asked by a ship reporter if he had come to marry an American heiress, the lifelong bachelor replied: "No, I much prefer a Swedish match...
...Three. Wall Street looked into Kreuger's hypnotic, ice-blue eyes and found that it could not resist this charmer. The staid and honorable banking firm of Lee, Higginson & Co. begged to be his broker and soon bore him a bouncing new corporation, International Match. Kreuger promptly convinced the directors, among them Percy Rockefeller, nephew of John D., that the millions raised from this and subsequent flotations should be deposited by him with a European subsidiary, to "avoid taxes." Kreuger, in turn, would mail back the dividends, some of them as handsome...
This transfer of funds to Kreuger, which eventually brought him $144 million, enabled him to go into his criminal corporate juggling act. His fertile mind spawned some 400 subsidiary holding companies, many of them mere names. He used their paper assets to establish his credit in borrowing more money for his loans to European countries; 15 nations received a staggering $400 million. He duly received his match monopolies in return, and soon he was making two out of every three matches in the world...
...Wall Street crash of '29 wrote an invisible "X" across Kreuger's name. Being an uncommon crook, Kreuger did not crumble on Black Thursday. Indeed, he never defaulted on a dividend; but he was in the trap of paying dividends out of capital. He gambled millions in the market himself, and lost. Outwardly calm but inwardly frantic, he became the master forger of the age when, in 1931. in the inner fastnesses of his regal headquarters at the Match Palace in Stockholm, he forged with his own hand $143 million in Italian government bonds. By now, Kreuger...
...Ivar Kreuger was both idol and symbol-not, as most men then thought, a Paul Bunyan of finance, but a gross glandular case of surpassing greed. Today, only one tiny match flare from Kreuger's mighty kingdom remains on the financial pages of U.S. newspapers. In mingled hope and irony, Kreuger & Toll 5% debenture bonds, with a $1,000 face value, sell on the N.Y. Stock Exchange for about $40. Before the bond's name appears the tiny letter "q," signifying "in bankruptcy...