[2][3] Kreuger's financial empire has been described by one biographer as a Ponzi scheme, based on the supposedly fantastic profitability of his match monopolies.

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.

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.

[10] Ivar Kreuger never married, but lived for many years in different periods with Ingeborg Eberth (née Hässler), a physical therapist from Stockholm, who first met him there in 1913.

In 1907, he managed to get the representative rights for the system for both the Swedish and the German markets, and at the end of 1907, he returned to Sweden with the goal of introducing the new methods in both countries at the same time.

Kreuger & Toll was the first firm in Europe to commit to finish projects by a fixed date, thus shifting the risk to the builder, who after all was in the best position to reduce delays.

[19][20] After Ivar got involved in his father's match factories in Kalmar, he became more focused on "constructing" new companies or taking control of other corporations – usually paying with his own securities instead of cash – rather than buildings and bridges.

Thus, by 1927, Ivar had bought banks, mining companies, railways, timber and paper firms, film distributors, real estate in several European cities as well as a controlling stake in L.M.

Ivar had originally tried to convince AB Jönköping-Vulcan to merge in December 1912, but they had not been interested as Vulcan was the dominating match company in Sweden.

During this time Kreuger also acquired the largest match manufacturing companies in Norway (Bryn and Halden) and in Finland (Wiborgs and Kekkola).

Ivar's methods resembled those John D. Rockefeller used in the formation of the Standard Oil Trust transforming dozens of struggling factories into a strong and profitable monopoly.

[27] It should be remembered that in the early part of the 20th century matches were a necessity for smoking and the lighting of stoves and gas appliances among other uses, and therefore demand for them was highly inelastic, meaning that a monopolist could raise prices (and hence profits) significantly without much affecting the quantity sold.

From 1925 to 1930, years when many countries in Europe were suffering after the First World War, Kreuger's companies gave loans to governments to speed up reconstruction.

Kreuger did not limit himself to matches, but gained control of most of the forestry industry in northern Sweden and planned to become head of a cellulose cartel.

These maneuvers were made both necessary and possible by his invention, decades ahead of his time, of Enron-style financial engineering, which reported profits when there were none and paid out ever increasing dividends by attracting new investment and/or looting the treasury of a newly acquired company.

[28] He was invited by President Hoover to the White House to discuss the subject and in June he was awarded the title Doctor of Business Administration by Syracuse University, where he had worked as a young chief engineer when Archbold Stadium was built there in 1907.

In Canada, for example, an estimated 20% to 25% of companies currently listed on the TSX make use of some form of dual-class share structure or special voting rights.

[34] Ivar and Lee Higginson & Co., his investment banker in the US, decided to have International Match issue new securities called convertible gold debentures.

These bonds gave investors the right to receive annual interest payments of 6.5 percent from International Match, which was an attractive rate at the time.

The convertible feature made these securities particularly attractive: they have both downside protection (because in the case of bankruptcy the bond holders were paid before the shareholders) and upside potential.

Ivar's popularity helped Lee Higginson sell $15 million of International Match gold debentures, at a price of $94.50 for each $100 of principal amount.

The associated debt, called "off balance sheet obligations", didn't appear in any financial statements of the companies Ivar controlled other than in summary form, if at all.

He also used other people as front men to conceal his actions, for example when he acquired almost half of the outstanding shares of Diamond Match Company so as not to raise anti-trust concerns in the USA.

[49] In March 1931, during a meeting at the German Ministry of Finance in Berlin, Swiss banker Felix Somary already warned of a bankruptcy of Kreuger's match company.

He had left Sweden for the last time on 23 November 1931 and returned to Europe on the ship Ile de France, arriving in Paris on 11 March 1932.

He met with Krister Littorin (vice president of Kreuger & Toll holding) and his own banker Oscar Rydbeck in Paris on 11 March to prepare for the Berlin meeting.

These bills were largely successful in their mission and the American financial industry did not witness frauds of the same magnitude until the Enron scandal and Bernard Madoff's Ponzi scheme.

Following the Kreuger crash, both the debentures and shares became worthless, and several thousand Swedes and small banks lost their savings and investments as a result.

[3] John Kenneth Galbraith wrote "Boiler-room operators, peddlers of stocks in the imaginary Canadian mines, mutual-fund managers whose genius and imagination are unconstrained by integrity, as well as less exotic larcenists, should read about Kreuger.

[58] Kreuger got the nickname "Saviour of Europe" by lending about $400 million (equivalent to c. $6 billion today) to rebuild their shattered economies after World War I.