The Match King

Ivar Kreuger, the Financial Genius Behind a Century of Wall Street Scandals

By: Frank Partnoy

Narrated by: L. J. Ganser

Length: 10 hrs and 48 mins

Publisher's summary

At the height of the roaring 20s, Swedish émigré Ivar Kreuger made a fortune raising money in America and loaning it to Europe in exchange for matchstick monopolies. His enterprise was a rare success story throughout the Great Depression.

Yet after Kreuger's suicide in 1932, the true nature of his empire emerged. Driven by success to adopt ever-more perilous practices, Kreuger had turned to shell companies in tax havens, fudged accounting figures, off-balance-sheet accounting, even forgery. He created a raft of innovative financial products - many of them precursors to instruments wreaking havoc in today's markets. When his Wall Street empire collapsed, millions went bankrupt.

Frank Partnoy, a frequent commentator on financial disaster for the Financial Times, The New York Times, NPR, and CBS's 60 Minutes, recasts the life story of a remarkable yet forgotten genius in ways that force us to rethink our ideas about the wisdom of crowds, the invisible hand, and the free and unfettered market.

©2009 Frank Partnoy (P)2009 Audible, Inc.

Critic reviews

"A fascinating depiction of a man and his era (Greta Garbo makes memorable cameos), this book is a snapshot of a time all too familiar now: a speculative real estate bubble, unbridled consumer spending, investors buying derivatives based on sketchy information and a Wall Street operating by its own rules." ( Publishers Weekly)

Among the best historical listens

A well read tale and unbelievable history that I teuly cannot believe I have never heard of this having actually happened. If you were/are on the fence of deciding your next book, then worry no more. Really a high quality story line with great detail! Highest recommendation!

Great Topics, Interesting Man, OK Book

I like the story of Ivar Kreuger, the financial innovations he created, and the time of the roaring 20s.
However, the book itself doesn't have a good flow, doesn't follow a consistent timeline (jumps back and then forward again), and repeats itself on some topics.
At many points I found that I stopped caring on the particulars of the negotiations and financial engineering details.
The narrator didn't help. Would take long inhaling pauses that bothered me. And talked like someone from the time period telling you the story on an old time radio.

Overall a good story, just not well executed IMO.

The Match King

This book is fabulous. Just when I thought the interest level had peaked, it got more interesting, right up to the end.

A fascinating figure the Match King

Ivar Kreuger was known for his financial wizardry and one of the most powerful businessmen of his time, although he did a lot of good, he also did a lot of bad things financially and the Great Depression was started in part by his businesses as they started to fail. Truly an interesting man and the book tells the story so well!

Financial Genius or Con Artist?

In 1920 Swedish businessman Ivar Kreuger (1880-1932) controlled most of the world’s safety match production, as well as mining, timber, media, banking and construction industries. He was one of the richest men in the world. He took advantage of the financial state of European countries after World War I and managed to push aside J. P. Morgan and Company to become the lender of choice to sovereign governments. He made a deal in 1929 the week the stock market collapsed to lend German 125 million dollars in return for the safety match monopoly that lasted until 1983.

Partnoy asks is the rise and fall of Kreuger a story of what happens to a person when ambition overreaches and maybe edges into the world of fraud? Or is it a tale of a premeditated confidence trick perpetrated by Kreuger?

Partnoy is a Professor of Law at the University of California San Diego and a historian who has studied Kreuger extensively and written a number of books about him. The first part of the book reads like a case for the prosecution. Sort of makes one think of Bernie Madoff but Kreuger was a real business man with real business and most often stayed within the letter of the law. But one must remember how lax the laws were in the 1920s. The collapse of the Kreuger Empire was responsible for the implementation of the 1933-34 security laws in the United States.

The book is meticulously researched and well written. It is more of a business history than a biography. Some of the businesses Kreuger founded or invested in are still standing today such as Swedish Match Company and Ericsson. L. J. Ganser narrated the book.

Intriguing Story About a Financial Genius

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

Yes, I would recommend it. The author seems pretty objective in assessing the good and bad of Kreuger, and providing us with evidence. A big plus. It's interesting hearing the story of IK and how he made his fortune. Amazing how he crashed through barriers, created businesses and wealth, and invented new financial instruments.

But, while IK was a genius, he also had some really bad premises that destroyed him: he accepted government involvement in the economy, he agreed with the idea of government monopolies, he engaged in some fraud, deciet and dishonesty. Would have been interesting, if he had better premises, seeing how he turned out and what would have happened.

I'd have liked, though, to have had more identification of what, psychologically and morally, made him wealthy and what conflicts he had to work through to achieve the successes he did. In other words, I'd have liked some rational philosophic analysis.

Any additional comments?

Interesting that, like Steve Jobs, IK had a practiced, intense stare. But, unlike Jobs, he did not focus only on making great, economical products. In both cases, the scale on which they work brings out their premises -- premises other people have, too, but which are not seen much since most people don't live large and develop the consequence of their ideas so fullly and broadly; lots of people just sit around and mope through life.

Fascinating

As a banker and CPA I found the book enthralling. The characters, and what they schemed and accomplished could have been written last week. I never knew that such sophisticated and complicated financing existed in the 1920's. The author describes the financial details so anyone can understand them. I think he could have better developed the various national economies that Kreuger did business in better. His main focus is on Kreuger and at times it appears he is a universe onto himself apart from world affairs. It seems the world depression was just one of many events that get a mention. One does not get an impression that Kreuger, with all of his financial acumen and personal knowledge of world leaders could have foretold what would happen.
I found the coda far fetched. The author seems to feel that all aspects of Kreuger's death have to be explained or theorized upon. Since none of his scenarios can be verified they take on the aura of the worst of sensationalist tabloid journalism.
Aside from the very last chapter, I found the book fascinating, useful and highly recommend it.

Solid; tale and telling not ideal; gasping reader

This is solid history but is of necessity full of elaborate economic schemes, many with numbers counted to places in cents, so it is sometimes tedious or hard to follow as audio. I think the book could still benefit from more dramatic, concise summary statements of what Kreuger was up to as punctuation or prefaces to the multi-paged econ-text book versions of Kreuger's plots (often drained of a vital sense of Kreuger's fear, cunning, and deceptions) that dominate the narrative. The dilution of drama may be intentional; the book's conclusion tries to rationalize Kreuger's lunatic-on-its-face forgery of Italian bonds and make him pitiable. Even in this narrative, Kreuger himself seems too much a character of Shakespearean hybris for this whitewash to work. The reader is good, but inconsistently anglicizes some European names; his anglicizing "Weimar" Germany as "Wimer" and the country Lichtenstein as " . . . STEEN" (not even in the dictionary, that) seems discordant given that the title character's name, e.g., is not anglicized. The reader also needed an audio director: he has a strange habit--I am not sure how any professional reader would not be aware of this, or why he has not been simply, emphatically directed out of it--about once a page, he pauses for emphasis and inhales through his mouth with an audible gasp. It is a tad bizarre and I found this distracting, but others may not care. In any case, he is the first audio book reader I have ever heard do this.

excellent Depression era history-biography

A powerful morality tale - Ivar Kreuger's scams are as relevant today as ever, and the reading of financial biography works nicely.
Partnoy peppers his biography with colorful history, as well as the occasional tangent (e.g., where did the term "bucket shop" come from?).

Whereas Ponzi's scheme (and Madoff's variation) are relatively simple pyramids, feasible only when observers opt to maintain their ignorance, Kreuger's methods are far more convoluted, and such methods continue to elude professionals today.

The reading is accessible, the pacing appropriate, and the lessons learned far more useful than those available in most financial/biographical options.

Very interesting

I originally read this on Kindle several years ago, but it was hard for me to follow all the intricacies of Krueger's financial shenanigans for some reason. Listening to it I was more able follow and understand what was going on. Very interesting story and another good case study of why if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. I found it a little off-putting that the author referred to the main character by his first name. I guess to me this nonfiction sounded more like a documentary or news article that I'm used to having people referred to by last name. But that's a small thing.
The narrator was excellent. The sound editor however, should have cut out the many breaths heard between sentences. I know we don't notice someone breathing irl, but in an audio book when you hear someone sucking in air through your earbuds it's kind of weird.
Overall a good book about a now mostly forgotten episode in our sordid history of greed and loss.