Frank Partnoy (Author)
Ivar Kreuger, the “best-liked crook that ever lived,” was a Swede who operated on Wall Street during the 1920s, and his apparent suicide in 1932 coincided with the collapse of his businesses, bankrupting millions of investors. Partnoy, author and academic, conducted extensive research on Kreuger, who was considered the greatest business mind of his time. He cornered global markets in safety matches by raising money in the U.S. and loaning it to European governments in return for monopoly control of production and sales; he devised and sold complicated financial products and with questionable accounting methods structured a long list of murky deals. Partnoy explains that Kreuger, while a crook, was an attractive one who created substantial wealth, revived much of post–World War I Europe, and generated real profits for investors before his empire collapsed. With the current arrest of Wall Street’s Bernard Madoff for stealing more than $60 billion from investors, we are reminded that history repeats itself. This is a timely and excellent book.