The Match Maker Who Nearly Burned Down Wall Street

Summary

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Business History – "The Match Maker Who Nearly Burned Down Wall Street"

Hosts: Jacob Goldstein & Robert Smith
Release Date: May 13, 2026
Podcast by: Pushkin Industries

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Overview

This episode dives into the remarkable—and ultimately disastrous—life of Ivar Kruger, the so-called "Match King" of Sweden. Once among the richest men in the world and a titan in matches and finance, Kruger's exploits straddled a very fine line between creative innovation and outright fraud. Through colorful anecdotes, historical context, and thematic parallels to modern-day business scandals, the episode unpacks how Kruger’s financial wizardry changed Wall Street, European economies, and the very rules of global business regulation.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Enigmatic Rise of Ivar Kruger (03:09–08:15)

• Origins: Born in 1880 in Kalmar, Sweden, Kruger comes from a match-making family but yearns for bigger things, moving to New York and contributing to major buildings like the Plaza and Flatiron.
• Ambition: Kruger’s drive is captured in his early letters:

  “Wait and see. I shall do great things. I'm bursting with ideas. I'm only wondering which to carry out first.” — Jacob Goldstein quoting Kruger [07:04]

• Return to Sweden: Shifts from construction back to the family match business in 1913, at a time when matches are a Swedish specialty (08:15).

2. Monopolizing Matches – From Commodity to Cartel (08:15–12:20)

• Sweden's Match Industry: Kruger applies lessons from American monopolies, gradually acquiring local match factories and integrating up the supply chain (chemicals, forests).
• Monopoly Formation: By 1917, creates Swedish Match, cementing his near-total control over the global match market.
• Character Drive:

  “One thing that is very clear by watching his outer life... wherever he was and whatever he had, he wanted more. More, more, more. He is a hungry ghost.” — Jacob Goldstein [11:12]

3. Financial Innovations—and Shady Practices Begin (12:20–16:47)

• Off-Balance Sheet Financing: In 1919, sets up a syndicate, pioneering off-balance sheet finance—later emulated by Enron and banks in the 2008 crisis.
• Accounting as Art:

  “A balance sheet was simply a canvas on which to paint a picture in the brightest possible colors.” — New Yorker, read by Robert Smith [14:22]

• Expansion: Diversifies into films (aiding Greta Garbo’s career), real estate, international markets, and speculative finance.

4. The Wall Street Connection & Creative (Sometimes Questionable) Capitalism (17:55–24:31)

• Going Global: Kruger forms International Match, leveraging US investors' thirst for high returns to fund European governments in exchange for national match monopolies.

• Historic Model: Ties with government mirror the old Bank of England’s agreement; France’s own prior match monopoly is described as precedent.

• Dual-Class Shares: Pioneers selling shares with little voting power—common today among tech giants like Facebook and Google.

  “You can buy the stock, but you’re not going to get control of the company... This is called a dual class stock structure.” — Jacob Goldstein [28:00]

5. Tax Havens & the Shifting Game (24:31–29:49)

• Offshore Maneuvers: Establishes Continental Investment Corporation in Liechtenstein for tax avoidance—a precursor to multinational strategies used by companies like Apple.
• Ponzi-Adjacent: Though not a pure Ponzi, Kruger’s system relies on raising new funds to pay old obligations:

  “It’s not a Ponzi scheme. He’s selling matches, but it’s Ponzi adjacent.” — Jacob Goldstein [26:41]

6. The Height of Success—and the Cracks Start to Show (36:26–41:34)

• Material Splendor: Kruger acquires global assets, island retreats, a Manhattan penthouse, and commissions Stockholm’s grand “Match Palace”—lavish and symbolic.

  “The great passion of Kruger’s life... he loved lilies of the valley, rosebuds, and a rose or an orchid in a narrow jar was a necessity on any desk where he might work.” — Robert Smith reading Fortune [37:10] “Prometheus... stole fire from the gods, brought it to humans, got chained to a rock and sentenced to have a vulture eat his liver out.” — Robert Smith [38:03]

• Major Deals: Secures vast loans-for-monopoly agreements with France and Germany at enormous scale—without actually holding the cash up front.
• Circular Financing: Describes how German reparations to France, French loan repayments to Kruger, and Kruger’s loans to Germany formed a precarious financial loop.

7. Collapse and Fraud Exposed (41:34–45:39)

• Market Crash: The 1929 crash and subsequent Depression sap investor confidence. Kruger cannot raise the new funds needed for his obligations.
• Outright Fraud: For the first time, forges $28 million in Italian bond certificates to use as loan collateral.

  “He forges £28,668,500 British pounds of Italian bond certificates… On paper. Especially drawing the squiggly lines.” — Jacob Goldstein and Robert Smith [42:58–43:03]

• Descent: Kruger’s mental state deteriorates. Failed asset sales expose accounting irregularities. On March 12, 1932, Kruger takes his own life.

8. The Aftermath & Legacy (48:58–57:19)

• Initial Admiration: Obituaries still hail Kruger as a visionary; the scope of his fraud is not immediately known.

  “He was a man of great constructive intelligence and wide vision who planned boldly...” — The Economist, read by Robert Smith [49:56]

• Unraveling the Empire: PriceWaterhouse uncovers systemic fraud; fake subsidiaries were used to paint a deceptive financial picture.

  “The balance sheets grossly misrepresent the true financial position... The fraudulent entries were made under the personal direction of the late Mr. Kruger. They were lies, of course.” — Robert Smith reading audit findings [52:05]

• Public Reckoning: Discovery of physical forged bonds dramatizes the fraud. Even Sweden’s Prime Minister resigns for minor involvement.

• Regulatory Reaction: The Kruger disaster directly inspires foundational US securities laws requiring financial transparency and audits—still the backbone of the SEC today.

  “They are making these rules in large part because of Ivar Kruger. The committee report for the securities act of 1933 has like 250 pages about IVAR Kruger.” — Jacob Goldstein [55:05]

• Business Continuity: Despite the collapse, core companies survived—Swedish Match endures, was acquired for $16B by Philip Morris in 2022, and even makes Zyn nicotine pouches today.

  “The deal went through. The company's books were solid. I guess Kruger would have been proud.” — Jacob Goldstein [57:14]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “A balance sheet was simply a canvas on which to paint a picture in the brightest possible colors.” (14:22)
• “He is a hungry ghost.” (11:12)
• “He was a man of ambition but no vanity. Least of all. Does personal suspicion light upon him in his last day.” — The London Times [49:56]
• “It’s not a Ponzi scheme... It’s Ponzi-adjacent.” (26:41)
• "Prometheus... got chained to a rock and sentenced to have a vulture eat his liver out. For eternity." (38:03)
• "The line between Ponzi and real business is subtler than we want to think." (56:45)

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Important Timestamps

• 03:09: Introduction of Ivar Kruger and his origins
• 08:15: Kruger's creation of the Swedish Match monopoly
• 12:20: Kruger's financial innovation—off-balance sheet syndicates
• 14:22: Accounting as art
• 17:55: Plans for European monopolies & relationship between finance and power
• 24:31: Early tax haven use with Liechtenstein
• 28:00: Invention of the dual-class share structure
• 36:26: Kruger's material wealth and the Match Palace
• 38:03: The symbolism of Prometheus
• 41:34: The web of circular debt among Germany, France, and Kruger
• 42:58: Forgery of Italian bonds—outright criminality begins
• 45:39: Kruger's suicide and the impact on Europe
• 52:05: Audit revelations and unraveling of the fraud
• 54:57: Emergence of US securities law as a response
• 57:14: Swedish Match's legacy and acquisition by Philip Morris

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Takeaways

• Innovator and Villain: Ivar Kruger was both a clever, drive-ahead business innovator and ultimately a fraudster whose appetite for “more” proved ruinous.
• Business Lessons: The story highlights how the line between legitimate financial innovation and criminal deception can be razor-thin, especially in times of unregulated markets.
• Lasting Influence: Kruger's methods (and collapse) directly inspired the financial regulations that still govern today’s markets—demonstrating how crisis often begets crucial reform.
• Legacy: The episode closes with irony—Kruger’s founding business, Swedish Match, not only survived but thrives today, a testament to the complicated, lasting impact that “the Match King” had on both business and regulation.

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For further reading:

• The Match King by Frank Partnoy
• Series of Fortune magazine articles on Ivar Kruger (1930s)

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Transcript

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[Jacob Goldstein]

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[Robert Smith]

Pushkin too quick?

[Jacob Goldstein]

No, it was perfect. Push kit stop. You got it. Once upon a time in the ancient Swedish Town of Kalmar.

[Robert Smith]

Should I put on my pajamas and get into bed? This is a great story.

[Jacob Goldstein]

There lived a man named Ivar Kruger. It is a great story. And if you need to get comfortable, get comfortable.

[Robert Smith]

Okay, I will.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Ivar Kruger went into the family business. Matches, wood matches made, I think, from the aspen trees in the local forest, though I'm not sure that they were aspen trees. And in the next few decades, our man Ivar would become not just a matchmaker, matchmaker making a match. He would become a financial innovator. He would pioneer financing. So clever that you see it in some of the most brilliant companies of our time. Facebook, Google.

[Robert Smith]

Okay.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Ivar would use these moves not only to become one of the richest men in the world, but to lend hundreds of millions of dollars to the governments of France and Germany and other European countries to help them rebuild after World War I. Until, in the end, everything burned down.

[Robert Smith]

Because of the matches?

[Jacob Goldstein]

Not because of the matches. Because of the finance. I'm Jacob Goldstein.

[Robert Smith]

I'm Robert Smith. And this is Business History. How would you describe it, Jacob?

[Jacob Goldstein]

It's a show about the history of business.

[Robert Smith]

Exactly.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Today on the show, the Match king, Ivar Kruger, a man whose story is about economic growth and financial innovation. It's about the relationship between governments and corporations. And it is about the line. Is it a fine line? I don't know, between creative finance and straight up fraud?

[Robert Smith]

Hey, it's a fine line.

[Jacob Goldstein]

It's definitely a line. Ivar Kruger became one of the richest, most famous businessmen in Europe, but he remained something of a mystery. He never married, he never had kids, as far as we know. And even people who knew him felt like, you know, they didn't really know what was going on.

[Robert Smith]

Which is very different than the stories that we've told of rich people in the United States who had fan clubs.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Thomas Anderson would like talk to any reporter who came to the door. Henry Ford wrote an autobiography relatively early in his life that was very popular. So, yes, quite different. There's this really nice description of this kind of aura of mystery from one of the key sources of today's show. This is a series of articles that ran in Fortune magazine in the 1930s by the writer Archibald MacLeish. Robert Smith, give us a hit of this.

[Robert Smith]

The truth was that few of the few who knew him could describe him well. His face faded out of memory. No one seemed to be able to recall his eyes. What survived was not a head, but a manner, a way of twisting the neck, a gracious, gentle courtesy in speech. What Survived was a myth. A man who could talk figures in the four languages of the world until his hearers delighted to believe a man whom the French bankers had called the charmer of Birds.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Charmer of birds is nice.

[Robert Smith]

I did pause on that. That's a great journalistic.

[Jacob Goldstein]

He's a good writer. I mean, Archibald McLeish is like a writer writer. I did pause on four languages of the world. I mean, obviously it's this very old school Eurocentric thing, but I was like, English, French, Spanish, Spanish, you think? And German. We don't know. I'm assuming he's not counting Swedish. Here's what we know. Here's what we know about Kruger. In spite of the mystery, he was born in 1880 in Kalmar, this small town on the Baltic Sea. And he always dreamed of getting out of his small town. And he did. He went to the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm and became an engineer. If you're an ambitious young man in Sweden, then, as I would like to think now, you get out of Sweden and you go to New York City. Of course, he got to New York and worked as a construction engineer. Helped to build the Plaza Hotel.

[Robert Smith]

Nice.

[Jacob Goldstein]

And the Flatiron Building.

[Robert Smith]

Oh, good one.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Literally two blocks from here. And maybe my favorite, one of my favorites, up there with the Chrysler Building.

[Robert Smith]

Yeah, I got it.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Highly rated, but still underrated. He writes to his parents. Wait and see. I shall do great things. I'm bursting with ideas. I'm only wondering which to carry out first.

[Robert Smith]

It's like from the musical Hamilton.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Yes.

[Robert Smith]

Just you wait.

[Jacob Goldstein]

He's gonna strike a match. Something, something. But there's a catch. So he eventually goes home to Sweden. It's 1907. He's in his late 20s and he starts a construction company with his friend, a friend named Paul Tol. They call the company Kruger and Tolle. And he knows how to build buildings. Cause he's been in New York, he's been on the cutting edge. And so the company does well. They build the stadium for the 1912 Stockholm Olympics. And the company's growing. But in 1913, a few years later, when Kruger is 33 years old, he decides to join his family's little match business back in Kalmar. And Sweden as a country has a great match industry. They're the great match producing country of the world.

[Robert Smith]

It seems odd to me that that would be the case.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Well, they got the trees, right? They got a lot of trees.

[Robert Smith]

And it's mostly trees.

[Jacob Goldstein]

It's mostly trees.

[Robert Smith]

And then you just have to add

[Jacob Goldstein]

Something to it, the business end.

[Robert Smith]

Yes.

[Jacob Goldstein]

And in fact, the safety match was invented in 1844 by a Swedish professor. And I guess the thing with the safety match, which I didn't realize before, is you got the special thing on the side of the box where you strike it. And so the idea is you, it only lights if you strike it there so that it doesn't like catch fire in your pocket on the box. But the thing is by this point that technology is ubiquitous, right. So safety matches are a commodity. And one of the great themes of business history, not just the show, but the actual history, is you can't make money selling a commodity. Or it's very hard to make money selling a commodity. Right. You have to have some move, otherwise you're just going to get competed down the marginal cost and you're never going to make any money. So Kruger's been in America at the turn of the century, in the early 1900s. What's going on there? Consolidation. This is the era of J.P. morgan, of the trusts. And so he sees what J.P. morgan did to create General Electric and US Steel. He bought up all the companies and made them one big monopolist.

[Robert Smith]

And he's thinking, well, if I take all these little matchbooks and these little matchbook makers, maybe I can be the JP Morgan of Sweden, at least of Swedish matches.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Yeah, he's gonna roll him up. And so he starts small. He gets a bank loan and buys seven match factories in Kalmar, his hometown. And you say seven match factories and it's a little town. And then you remember like. Oh yeah, it's like, remember in our Henry Ford show, right? What is a factory at this point? It's like a room with some guys making matches and they have presumably some amount of machinery, but it is not some big high tech thing. Right. And then he starts vertically integrating, right? Not just buying match factories, but buying the inputs, you know, he buys the chemical companies selling the phosphorus that go into those matches. And he buys vast tracts of forests. And once he has these, he has

[Robert Smith]

leverage over the whole industry. Yeah, because he can go to a match company and say, well, you know, you can go it on your own, but I'm not going to sell you the phosphorus.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Yeah. Or the wood or the matches. Sorry. Good luck. And it works. He gets bigger and bigger. And in 1917, he issues a bunch of stock and takes over the last big rival in the Swedish match business company, whose name I'm going to say, because I love it, Jan Koping and Vulcan. Vulcan.

[Robert Smith]

I mean, that's such a great name, Vulcan Matches. He should keep that name.

[Jacob Goldstein]

He should keep that name. Although as I've said before, and I'll say again now, I love the old school companies that just say what they are. And if you're a big Swedish match company, you're going to call it Swedish Match.

[Robert Smith]

He really called it Swedish Match Company.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Swedish Match, Swedish Match. Now he's got his monopoly. Now he is the US steal, but for Sweden and matches, which by the

[Robert Smith]

way are selling for pennies at this point.

[Jacob Goldstein]

But a lot of pennies. It's a lot of pennies. And he's growing, right? He is, you know, rationalizing the business as they would say later. He's closing some factories, modernizing others. And you know, I'll tell you one thing about Kruger. Like I said, we don't, you know, he didn't leave a diary or anything like that. So we don't have like a rich inner life of a guy. But maybe he didn't have a rich inner life. One thing that is very clear by watching his outer life, by watching his actions in the world is wherever he was and whatever he had, he wanted more. He always wants more. And this is going to be a theme through the story up and spoiler alert, down. He just. More, more, more. He is a hungry ghost. And so around this time, in order to feed this need for growth, for more, he makes a shift that in some ways is not obvious, but it's really profound. And that is this. He goes from being a guy using finance to grow his match business to being a guy who like kind of happens to be selling matches, but his real thing is finance.

[Robert Smith]

I think everyone discovers this eventually. Like it's not hard to make a match, I imagine, but it's so much easier to make money with money. It is tempting to every business I think we've talked about so far. Some have gone too far.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Yeah, I mean it reminds me as you're saying that of like there was some famous bank robber and they said, why do you rob banks? And he said that's where the money

[Robert Smith]

is and it's exactly right for business.

[Jacob Goldstein]

The business of money is literally where the money is. So here's Kruger's first move that makes him a real finance guy. Comes in 1919. He creates a syndicate. Love that word. And basically what happens is this, the syndicate is this entity and he gets a bunch of bankers to put money into this bucket, into this syndicate.

[Robert Smith]

Not in his own company, in the separate syndicate.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Exactly. It is apart. They use this word, apart. Swedish Match gets to use the money in the syndicate and the banks have an option to get repaid from the money in the syndicate with interest.

[Robert Smith]

It's like a loan. But crucially, it is not a loan.

[Jacob Goldstein]

It is not a loan. It is money in a syndicate that Swedish Match can use. But on Swedish Matches books on its balance sheet it is not reflected as a loan. So this is off balance sheet financing.

[Robert Smith]

And a lot of companies had problems with this to this day where they create these entities where they don't really have to report what's going on. It can hide assets, but it can also hide huge debts.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Yes. I mean Enron famously did this. It also was a huge deal in the financial crisis of 2008. Right. Banks created these SPVs, special purpose vehicles. Yeah.

[Robert Smith]

We're even seeing a little bit of now in data center construction. Little obfuscating where the debts lay.

[Jacob Goldstein]

And well, here, Robert, I want you to actually read this thing. There's this article that came out in the New Yorker decades later about Kruger and there's a line about him and how he thought about this stuff that actually made me think of you.

[Robert Smith]

A balance sheet was simply a canvas on which to paint a picture in the brightest possible colors. Oh, writers were so good back then. So good.

[Jacob Goldstein]

And you know, a balance sheet is like supposed to be just the basic accounting statement of a business.

[Robert Smith]

It is an art. And I've said this again and again and again, accounting is an art form and the practitioners, and they want it

[Jacob Goldstein]

to be an art form and the

[Robert Smith]

practitioners are the great artists of our age.

[Jacob Goldstein]

So now Kruger has his canvas, he has his money, he's got his syndicate. What does he do with this? With this off balance sheet money? What doesn't he do with it?

[Robert Smith]

I feel like at this point if we had music it would be like ba dum dum dum dum dum.

[Jacob Goldstein]

And then like the black right reel of him doing this and that, he's expanding his business. Montage Time India. He's speculating in currencies, getting into real estate. He gets into film production, of course. Helps promote the career of a young hat clerk in a Stockholm department store who's named Greta Gustafson, who will later be discovered by Louis Meyer in America and become Greta Garbo, one of the great stars of early Hollywood.

[Robert Smith]

Amazing.

[Jacob Goldstein]

One other thing that he does with the money, and this is going to be crucial for the long term story, he pays really high dividends on the stock of his two now two key companies of the construction company Kruger and Toll, which has Become sort of a holding company. And on Swedish Match and we don't

[Robert Smith]

talk a lot about dividends these days. But back then dividends were really the reason that you own stock and dividends are just a share of the profits for that quarter. And so there were people for whom investing wasn't buy a stock and sell it later at a higher price. It was buy a stock, keep the stock and get a check four times a year in dividends.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Yes. And you know, fundamentally the promise of buying a stock at the most basic level is not you get to sell it for more later, it's you get a share of the profits.

[Robert Smith]

We're so old fashioned that way.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Yeah, I mean nobody thinks that way anymore. But the point of buying a company is, oh, that company is going to make profits. I'm going to get some of those profits. And in a kind of fundamentals way, the reason a stock price goes up today is because people think the profits in the future are going to be even higher and you'll get a bigger share of those profits. So he's paying like 15 or 20% dividends, which is wild, wildly high. You never see it today and is like maybe should start making you nervous. Maybe it's the first sign.

[Robert Smith]

It seems like a lot. And this is one of the problems that happens with dividends is that if everyone's looking at the money, they get back four times a year. You are tempted as someone who runs a company to kind of goose that a little bit. Right. You want people to buy into your company, you want your dividend to look good. A nice big round even number. We saw this even with General Electric,

[Jacob Goldstein]

in our General Electric earnings, like the version of it today is earnings. And they want to meet earnings what their expectation is for earnings, which are basically profits. Right? So it's working for Kruger. He's paying these high dividends. Everybody loves him. By 1922, Swedish Match is making something like 20 billion boxes of matches a year and selling most of the matches on planet Earth.

[Robert Smith]

Just imagine somebody who's like, I'm, I'm. Long matches.

[Jacob Goldstein]

He is very long matches. You know what he wants with a majority of planet Earth sales of matches, it's always the same.

[Robert Smith]

He wants more, he wants more.

[Jacob Goldstein]

So if it's 1922 and you're the king of the global match business and you've figured out how to use finance and you want more, where do you go?

[Robert Smith]

You go to Wall street, you go

[Jacob Goldstein]

to New York City, nyc. I mean think of it. Ivar Kruger and the New York of the 1920s. Perfect match.

[Robert Smith]

Oh, nicely done.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Thank you. Regulation basically doesn't exist yet. It's a laissez faire decade. There is no modern stock market regulation, you know, like we have now. Wall street is doing great. It's the Jesse Livermore. Actually, when I got here, I thought of your Jesse Livermore show.

[Robert Smith]

We talked about this era in the 20s when it wasn't just there was all this money to be made, but everybody, every single person, all the way down to the stock clerk, was pouring money into the markets. The people who were investors, traders, were celebrities. They were all over the newspapers. They thought this was the height of American business in the 1920s.

[Jacob Goldstein]

So Krueger gets to this New York, this America, this Wal street, and he meets a banker named Donald Durant, who is going to be a key figure, his key banker. Durant works at a bank called Lee Higginson, which at the time was a big, prestigious bank. And Durant was a star at Lee Higginson. He'd started out as a stock boy, and now at age 34, Durant is a partner. So, of course, Durant knows about Kruger and Toll and Swedish match hears that Kruger's in town, and Durant and Kruger meet. And unsurprisingly, Ivar Kruger has a plan. And his plan is a way that he can combine the match business and finance at this global, almost absurd scale. It's wildly ambitious. Durant loves it, and he invites Kruger to present his plan to the partners at the bank at Lee Higginson. So they set up a lunch meeting at headquarters on Broad Street. You and I have walked down there. It's right around the corner from the New York Stock Exchange. Krueger comes in for the meeting. There's this, you know, long conference table set with silver and crystal. And one detail we do know about Kruger that's really interesting is for meetings like this, he would spend hours, hours rehearsing. He would think about what small talk am I going to make? Who am I going to greet first? What's my exit? When do I leave? He would practice the key phrases over and over. So he comes in, ready, and he gives the bankers his pitch. He starts with this big sort of macro picture, okay? It's the. You know, it's the early 1920s. European governments are broke and trying to rebuild from World War I.

[Robert Smith]

Crushed. Crushed by what happened.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Incredibly devastating. So European governments need money. US Investors are manic. They're pouring money, as you said, into anything they can. So US Investors want high returns on their money. They see Europe as this Sort of growth opportunity. Kruger wants a monopoly on the match business in Europe. Matches. He's still a match guy.

[Robert Smith]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Jacob Goldstein]

And so his plan is to tie all of these things together. Here is his plan, going to raise money from US investors, lend it to European governments, and in exchange for the loans, in addition to interest repayment with interest, he will make the governments give him a monopoly on the match business in their countries.

[Robert Smith]

Every cigarette that's smoked will be lit by a Kruger match, a Swedish match.

[Jacob Goldstein]

And this is, it is a weird, you know, today there is this international bond market and the idea that you would get a monopoly in exchange for a loan is weird, but historically it is not weird. Historically this is a normal way that corporations worked. I mean the one that came to my mind first was the bank of England, which was chartered in the late 1600s as a private bank and it was set up by an act of parliament. It got a monopoly on certain, like banking operations in London and in exchange it was created to give a loan to the government.

[Robert Smith]

Yeah, companies were special back then and required the king or Queen to say, yes, you are allowed to do this.

[Jacob Goldstein]

And typically it was, you have a monopoly on this business early on and even later. This I didn't know until I was working on this story. The French government needed money in the 1870s, I believe after the Franco Prussian War. And they created a match monopoly in France in the 1870s and essentially leased it out in exchange for money. So in this instance, it's good for the government because they can borrow the money, it's good for the match company cuz they get a monopoly. The obvious loser is the people paying too much for the matches. Right.

[Robert Smith]

It's a fraction of a cent, but still, as you say, it adds up.

[Jacob Goldstein]

It adds up like they are the silent losers here. But Kruger and the bankers and the government in this model all get what they want and the bankers love it. They love it in part because Lee Higginson has never quite been the biggest of the big time. Lending money to governments is the top of the game in some ways. A lot of the origin of finance over centuries was lending money to the governments. And J.P. morgan, the bank is the big player, has been the large lender when there have been private lenders. And so Lee Higginson thinks, oh, finally we can get up there. So in 1923, with the backing of Durant and Lee Higginson, Kruger creates a new corporation to carry out his plan.

[Robert Smith]

What Swedish match isn't good enough?

[Jacob Goldstein]

Think Swedish Match. But international.

[Robert Smith]

Global Match.

[Jacob Goldstein]

International Match. International Match technically controlled by Swedish Match, which in turn is technically controlled by Kruger and Toll. And frankly, Ivar Kruger is the only one who really understands what's going on, which is going to be important. But the bankers, for now, they don't care. They're happy. They're selling the bonds to fund International Match. The people buying the bonds are happy because the bonds are paying six and a half percent. And Kruger is happy because he's in control. And now he has more. And so Ivar does what he does best. Comes up with a new shady but technically legal kind of finance that is going to be really popular for decades, maybe a century to come. He's done it already with off balance sheet financing. And now he's going to do it with offshore tax havens.

[Robert Smith]

Oh, what would have been offshore at that time? Not Panama, British Virgin Islands, Jersey Islands.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Good guess.

[Robert Smith]

Bahamas.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Liechtenstein.

[Robert Smith]

Oh, classic.

[Jacob Goldstein]

How could I forget? He's more Continental. You're thinking more British? Lichtenstein. Is that how you even say it? Liechtenstein. Lichtenstein. He creates the Continental Investment Corporation, which as far as I'm concerned would just call it Offshore Tax Haven Inc. Just called it Shady But Legal Inc. Yeah.

[Robert Smith]

There's 14 people in Liechtenstein and they're all on his secret board.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Yeah, they're all. In fact, he puts an ad in the paper and hires some random guy to run it.

[Robert Smith]

Are you joking? That's truly.

[Jacob Goldstein]

That's what happens to this day, is it?

[Robert Smith]

This is what happens with offshore, with offshore corporations to this day. There's people who live in these tiny island countries who just join everyone's boards.

[Jacob Goldstein]

They got a P.O. box.

[Robert Smith]

Yeah.

[Jacob Goldstein]

And to be clear, he's doing this because he makes a deal with Lichtenstein where he pays low taxes there. Right? He has a low tax rate. And so to the extent he can shift his profits from wherever he's doing his deals to Liechtenstein, he lowers his tax exposure. And this made me think of Ireland, you know. You heard about this a lot. Maybe. 10 years ago I was reading this, actually, this Brookings Institution report when I was looking into this.

[Robert Smith]

Take it back at night, tucked on the hand, reading. The Brookings Institution.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Yes, from a few years ago, about Apple. And it said at one point, 60% of the profits that Apple earned outside of the US were earned in Ireland. Somehow, magically.

[Robert Smith]

To be clear, they don't make the iPhone in Ireland.

[Jacob Goldstein]

No. Nor do they sell 60% of their ex U S stuff in Ireland.

[Robert Smith]

They would move their assets, their intellectual property assets, which you don't have to put on A ship. They would just say, oh, this is part of our Irish subsidiary. So any profits made off of this are Irish profits. And they got a tax deal from the Ireland part of it.

[Sponsor/Ad Narrator]

Right.

[Jacob Goldstein]

There was a move called the Double Irish, where somehow there were two different Irish companies that some companies would do. There was one, the Double Irish with a Dutch sandwich, where you put a Dutch company in the middle.

[Robert Smith]

Cuda involved.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Something I don't know, you're less about this now. It's not the active thing that it was, but it's a perennial favorite. So now Kruger sends the money he raised from the International Match stocks to Continental, uses some of the money to pay those high dividends, pays some debts and you know, at this point it's starting to feel like it's not a Ponzi scheme. He's selling matches, but it's Ponzi adjacent. Right. When you're raising money and sticking it here and then using your newly raised money to pay off your debts gets a little worrisome. So he's gonna make one more move, another pioneering move that this one today doesn't even seem shady. When he did it, it seemed shady. And that is this. He needs more money. Wants to sell stock, not borrow it as debt. But he needs to keep control because weird stuff is happening on the books. He can't have somebody buy up half of his company and be like, I want to see the books. Cause the books aren't looking good at this point. It's a canvas. So he sells stock, which obviously means you own part of the company. But he says, yeah, you can buy the stock, but you're not going to get control of the company. You're only going to get 1 1000th of a vote per share. And I get one vote per share. This is called a dual class stock structure.

[Robert Smith]

This must have been amazing at the time. We accept it now with technology companies because we're like, oh, well, the genius founder needs to keep control of the company. And people are begging to join high

[Jacob Goldstein]

tech companies, Facebook and Google, to cite two very big modern companies that went public and said, you can buy stock, but you don't get to tell us what to do with the company.

[Robert Smith]

Seems normal now, but back then backed out. Well, yeah, back then, like that was part of the covenant of buying a stock.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Yeah. And reasonably so. You are buying ownership in the company. You own part of the company. He's like, yeah, you can own part of it, but you don't get to tell me what to do. And people love it. People think ivar Kruger is a genius. Like with tech founders today, people buy up these kind of second class shares and Kruger doesn't have to tell anybody what he's doing. And there are not rules that require him to do so. Another thing we're not used to today, right? There are no rules that say you have to have an outside auditor. There are no rules that say you have to put out annual reports that say these things. He'll put out reports, but they say almost nothing. Nobody knows what's going on because it's the 1920s.

[Robert Smith]

We haven't had a problem yet.

[Jacob Goldstein]

We haven't had the big problem that is coming in this story and for Kruger. So he's doing this for a couple years and in 1925, his big plan starts working. First he makes a deal with Poland, okay? It's a step. Gets a 20 year match monopoly in exchange for a $6 million loan. And then in 1926, France. France has a financial crisis, basically. And instead of going to JP Morgan, they go to Ivar Kruger. This is a much bigger deal. He promises to lend France $70 million in exchange for a right to control the French match monopoly for 20 years.

[Robert Smith]

And the French love to smoke. I just want to pause for a moment to say entire countries are propped up by little wooden matches.

[Jacob Goldstein]

It's elegant. There's that meme. What is the meme where there's like a building falling down or something of one little iron bar and a dude standing beneath it, you know, but in this case, instead of an iron bar, it's like a bunch of little matches instead of a building. It's France. And when Kruger's making these deals, he doesn't have 70 million, right? He's promising to get 70 million, but he's a hero of the American market. And so he can just keep going back to the market. And in one way or another, with his banker Durant at Lee Higginson, he can raise more money and more money and more money. He wants more. He can get more. And there is this letter Durant writes to Krueger around this time. That is, that is explaining this. Here, give it to us.

[Robert Smith]

For the third time in about three years, you, Kruger, have gone to the public and asked them to double overnight the amount of their investment in your company. And each time this is met with success. We recall no other company with such a record. They're saying you can do anything you want.

[Jacob Goldstein]

One really interesting thing about this moment is often people hate bankers. A banker comes in and lends money to the government. Everybody is resentful. At this moment, the French love Kruger. They perceive him as their savior. The French Prime Minister gives him the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor. And one editorial in a French paper says the French miracle has elevated Ivar Kruger to the position of Superman of Finance.

[Robert Smith]

Oh, I always love this moment. When we do business history, we can just revel in at a moment. He's Superman. He saved France. He's a match. Genius. He has all the money he wants

[Jacob Goldstein]

or needs and it will all come crashing down later in the show.

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[Jacob Goldstein]

We're back from the ads. Ivar Kruger is the king of the world. He can do anything. He's buying up banks, mines, railroads, timber, paper. Buys a controlling stake in Ericsson, the Swedish phone company, which you may remember from the Flip Phone era.

[Robert Smith]

I do.

[Jacob Goldstein]

He's buying Rolls Royces, buys a yacht. He buys a private island off of Stockholm to go to on his yacht, buys a penthouse in Manhattan with a rooftop garden, buys apartments in Paris and Berlin and Warsaw. He actually has greenhouses on the roof everywhere. And that Fortune article that I mentioned before talks about how he loved flowers. Hmm. Read it.

[Robert Smith]

The great passion of Kruger's life. This article said he loved lilies of the valley, rosebuds, and a rose or an Orchid in a narrow jar was a necessity on any desk where he might work.

[Jacob Goldstein]

The desk where he worked at this time was at the headquarters of Kruger and Toll that he had built in this magnificent fashion in Stockholm. Became known as the Match Palace. I think in Swedish as the Matchstick Palace.

[Robert Smith]

Oh, love it. But not made out of matches. Made out of marble.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Marble columns and, you know, bronze sculptures. I did imagine it made out of wood, actually.

[Robert Smith]

But no, no.

[Jacob Goldstein]

He has a silent room where he is not to be bothered and no one is to speak with him. And in the boardroom there is this giant mural of Prometheus, the figure from Greek mythology. On a winged horse flying down a rainbow to bring fire to the people in darkness below.

[Robert Smith]

Prometheus is perfect. Stole fire from the gods, brought it

[Jacob Goldstein]

to humans, got chained to a rock and sentenced to have a vulture eat his liver out. Every day, if I recall correctly.

[Robert Smith]

For eternity.

[Jacob Goldstein]

For eternity. Like, do you think they didn't know that part?

[Robert Smith]

They knew that part.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Building the tallest building in the world, you know, we've talked about. Don't do that. But I feel like this one, it's right there in the story. Like it's right there in the story.

[Robert Smith]

Maybe it'll work out for me better than it did for Prometheus.

[Jacob Goldstein]

It's not gonna work out for him better. So the Match palace opens in 28. And you know what Ivar Kruger wants? He wants more. Because that's all he's ever gonna want. Next year. October of 1929, Krueger gets more. He makes his biggest deal yet. The German government agrees to a deal where Kruger will loan them $125 million in two tranches. 50 million in 1930, the rest in 1931. And Kruger, of course, doesn't have $125 million. Cuz that's not the way he does business. He'll go to the market and get it. Which is what he's always done. And so on Wednesday, October 23, 1929, he in fact raises some of the money he's going to need for this deal. What comes after Wednesday, October 23, 1929?

[Robert Smith]

Well, Thursday always comes after Wednesday.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Indeed.

[Robert Smith]

But I feel like it was kind of a dark Thursday, Gary.

[Jacob Goldstein]

The darkest. A Thursday that could be more. No, darker. October 24, 1929.

[Robert Smith]

Black Thursday.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Black Thursday. The stock market crash that started it all. Shares of Kruger and Toll, the company sort of at the top of the of Kruger's empire, actually are not hit so hard. They're down like 12%. And Krueger cables Durant and says, well, it's bad timing. We just did this deal yesterday. But he says, I will cover half of your bank's exposure if your investment doesn't recover by the end of next year. And essentially he's saying, look, America is panicking, but it's just superficial. Things are to going chugging along over here in Europe. My companies are fine. We got this deal in Germany.

[Robert Smith]

People will always smoke.

[Jacob Goldstein]

People will always smoke. Very good. So he still needs to come up with a bunch of this money in 1930 for the German deal. And amazingly, in April of 1930, the French repay their $75 million loan ahead of schedule, which gives Kruger the money he needs to make that $50 million loan to Germany. And if we just pause for a moment. Yeah. Think about the mechanics here.

[Robert Smith]

So France is paying back the money to Kruger.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Yes.

[Robert Smith]

And France is getting the money from Germany, who has lost World War I and agreed to pay the money back to France.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Largely. Yes. Right. Yeah.

[Robert Smith]

Now Germany needs money and they're getting it from Kruger, who just got the money from France.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Yes. You could draw like a circle, right? It is a circle. It goes Germany to France, France to Kruger, Kruger to Germany. It's the circle like every banker dreams of being in the middle of. And it works. It works. Kruger at this time is still making more deals. In 1930, he adds Bolivia, Bulgaria, Guatemala, Lithuania, Turkey and Yugoslavia to his portfolio of match monopolies. And then comes 1931, which at this

[Robert Smith]

point, Kruger has survived the main part of the financial crash. But of course, the depression is coming.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Yes.

[Robert Smith]

And that's when every company is vulnerable.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Yeah. I mean, and we forget often, looking back at the Depression, we sort of telescope it down and just think, oh, 1929, crash, Great Depression. But it really wasn't like that. Right. Like 1929, there was a stock market crash, but the stock market crashed, you know, whatever, from time to time. And the key thing that happened was things got worse after that. And 1931 is when things are getting really bad. And Kruger needs another $75 million to lend to Germany for the second tranche, the second chunk of that loan. But now he can't make the move he's always done. He can't just go to the capital markets and say, I'm Ivar Kruger, give me some money, and we'll all do great. He tries and he doesn't get enough money. And this is the moment when, as far as I can tell, for the first time, Kruger crosses the line from shady finance to just outright fraud. He does it in this amazingly direct way. So he's sitting in his office at the Match palace, and he forges £28,668,500 British pounds of Italian bond certificates.

[Robert Smith]

On paper.

[Jacob Goldstein]

On paper. On paper.

[Robert Smith]

Especially drawing the squiggly lines that are always around the outside.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Yes. I don't know. I know he's forging the signatures. I know he's forging the signatures. And so he has these pieces of paper, these stock certificates, and he uses them as collateral. He gets a loan from a Swedish bank secured by these bonds, which are

[Robert Smith]

as good as money in that world.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Yes, Sovereign bonds. Sovereign bonds are a classic, solid collateral. I mean, it is amazing to think of the state of sort of communications at the time that you could actually do this, right?

[Robert Smith]

He went into the bank, he showed them a bunch of pieces of paper signed with some Italian name, and they're like, oh, fine, have the money.

[Jacob Goldstein]

But, you know, the problem with Kruger is his whole universe is always needing more money. It's not just like, oh, now I'm fine. He needs more money. So he decides he's gonna sell his stake in Ericsson in the phone company. You know, it's a real asset, real business, making money. And. And he finds a buyer, an American company, called it the Other T. International Telephone and Telegraph. They do business in, I don't know, in Puerto Rico and in Spain. They're like, okay, great, yeah, we'll expand to Sweden. And they send auditors to Sweden to look at Ericsson's books, to, you know, study the balance sheet.

[Robert Smith]

That beautiful painting. They did not appreciate the beautiful painting.

[Jacob Goldstein]

I imagine it's a little too abstract for them. It's a little too modernist, not sufficiently representational. They see the books and they cancel the deal. They're like, no, we are not buying whatever this is. And Durant the banker hears about this, and Kruger's like, no, no, it's just some problem with translation. It's fine. There's no big deal. Then Kruger, like, turns white and slumps down in his chair. So Durant calls in a doctor. He knows Kruger is not doing well and whatever, and leaves. And Kruger, at this point, is clearly in bad shape. He's. He's answering the phone when nobody calls. He's telling people to come in when nobody has knocked.

[Robert Smith]

Talking to the flowers.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Maybe he is talking to the flowers. At one point, his housekeeper finds a slip of paper where he's written, I am too tired to continue. And Durant sees that the business is not going so well. There's this $4 million loan that Kruger doesn't repay. There's $50 million in German bonds that are supposed to be in the bank and they're not there. And Kruger is making excuses, you know, saying yes, yes, whatever. It's just some error. We'll figure it out. And on the morning of March 12, Kruger closes the blinds of his apartment, lays down on the bed and shoots himself an inch below the heart. Ivar Kruger is dead.

[Robert Smith]

We'll deal with the aftermath after the break.

[Sponsor/Ad Narrator]

This episode is brought to you by Navy Federal Credit Union. At Navy Federal Credit Union, May is their favorite month. Even though they support the military community all year long, Military Appreciation Month is their time to celebrate all those who go above and beyond. Because they know all members of the military community protect our country at home and abroad, take care of their families and volunteer in their communities. That's why it's been their mission to help for over 90 years as a member owned credit union. They invest in their members with lower rates and fewer fees. Navy Federal Credit Union also supports the military community through their partnership with Higher Heroes usa, empowering transitioning service members, veterans and military spouses to succeed in the civilian workforce. And many of their employees are part of the community they serve, so they provide families with personalized financial guidance and award winning 247 support. To learn more, visit navyfederal.org celebrate and from all of us, Happy Military Appreciation Month. Navy Federal Credit Union Navy Federal is insured by NCUA Running a small business means every hire matters. A bad hire can cost you time, money and momentum. A good hire? They can help grow your business. But finding great talent isn't easy, especially when you don't have the time or resources to sift through piles of resumes to find the right fit. That's why LinkedIn built Hiring Pro, your new hiring partner that screens candidates for you. So instead of sorting through applications, you spend your time talking to candidates who are actually a good fit. You know what? This makes me think of my beloved Boston Celtics. Three years ago, they chose a new coach, Joe Missoula, who was like the third or fourth assistant off the bench. Never had any NBA coaching experience. Everyone was expecting him to fail. And you know what? Turns out he was one of the best coaches in the game. And without him, there's no way the team would have made the playoffs this year, let alone be contenders for the Finals. Sometimes the right hire makes all the difference. With Hiring Pro, you can hire with confidence, knowing you're getting the best talent for your business. In fact, Those hiring with LinkedIn are 24% less likely to need to reopen a role within 12 months compared to the leading competitor. Join the 2.7 million small businesses using LinkedIn to hire. Get started by posting your job for [e-mail] Pushkin terms and conditions apply.

[Jacob Goldstein]

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[Jacob Goldstein]

taxes and fees extra. See full [e-mail]. We're back from the ads. Ivar Kruger is dead. It's a huge story around the world. There are rumors that he maybe isn't dead, that he's still alive. Newspaper stories talk about detectives going in to see that he actually is dead. And interestingly, Kruger dies a hero. And you know, he had loaned hundreds of millions of dollars to countries around Europe at a time when credit had dried up and they needed the money. The London Times called Kruger a man of ambition but no vanity. Least of all. Does personal suspicion light upon him in his last day? The Economist I kind of feel like should have known better, didn't here read what the Economist said about him.

[Robert Smith]

He was a man of great constructive intelligence and wide vision who planned boldly yet on a basis which seemed to be protected by carefully devised safeguards. It's not age.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Well, they just don't know yet.

[Robert Smith]

And you know, maybe part of this was because so many of those rich people that failed during this time had lived really like gossip column worthy lives, had cheated on their wives, were out with showgirls, were just like throwing around their wealth and were not respected individuals. And when they lost their money, it seemed like maybe they were asking for

[Jacob Goldstein]

like the Jesse Livermore story when he had the, was it the Ringling Brothers circus for his kid's birthday party.

[Robert Smith]

Whereas in this case, like, because he was so quiet and people didn't know him, they just knew his deeds.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Yes, and I do think the lending money to Europe was meaningful, right? It was finance actually doing something useful in the world after a war, just moving money around after a war. So his funeral comes a few days later and Durant is there, the banker, and Durant, it's Clear still believes in Kruger, still believes in what they have done together. When I read this, I thought of the phrase motivated reasoning. We can use reason to convince ourselves to believe whatever it is in our interest to believe, right? It should have been clear to Durant that something shady was going on, that there was this super opaque set of all these different companies, that only Krueger knew what was going on, that he kept needing to raise more money, but it was in his interest to believe otherwise. And we are all subject to this. We all think we are rational, but when we need to believe something to go on, we believe what we need do to believe. So Kruger is dead. He's the only guy who understood how his empire worked. Somebody needs to untangle it, right? It is a going concern. There are all these companies that have loaned money that are selling matches that have match monopolies. And so the Swedish government brings in an accounting firm, Pricewaterhouse, the famous American accounting firm, to investigate and surprise, they find that it's super shady. Here, read us some hits from there.

[Robert Smith]

Apparently, the balance sheets grossly misrepresent the true financial position of the companies. And the fraudulent entries were made under the personal direction of the late Mr. Kruger. They were lies, of course.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Yeah. The auditors find all these subsidiaries spread around Europe, most of which have no practical business function. They're just ways for Kruger to move money around, to paint his canvas of lies. And to the public, this is all kind of abstract, right? Like it's coming out, but it's very accounting y.

[Robert Smith]

And, and we know this from covering accounting scandals. It's super hard to explain. Like, well, wait, why does it matter whether this loan was on this book or that book?

[Jacob Goldstein]

So there is a moment when it becomes less abstract, and that is when investigators seize the Match palace, that headquarters in Stockholm, and they find those forged Italian bonds. They're actual pieces of paper, less abstract than a sort of balance sheet. And amazingly, so it makes it seem so long ago, Sweden's foreign minister, to ascertain the veracity of the bonds, takes these pieces of paper, these bond certificates, gets on an airplane and flies to Rome and meets with Mussolini. Meets with Mussolini.

[Robert Smith]

Is this your signature?

[Jacob Goldstein]

Is this. Yeah, it wasn't actually his signature. I was hoping it was, but it's something. Yeah. Are these real? And Mussolini's like, no, I've never seen those in my life. And in fact, Wesley, like, goes and gets some other documents that have the actual signatures. And like on some of the documents, the signatures are actually misspelled. Sloppy work, Ivar. Come on. And this story is in papers around the world, right? There's pictures of the bond certificates. I think you could see it's just a lie. It's not creative financing. It is a lie. And people around Europe are arrested. The Prime Minister of Sweden actually has to resign because he had cashed a $10,000 check from Krueger and then lied and said he hadn't cashed it. The stock prices of Kruger's companies, you know, collapse. Companies default on their debts. And Durant the banker is called to testify before the US Senate.

[Robert Smith]

Here's what they wrote at time. Face white, lips twitching, nervous voice. Many times, banker Durant failed to remember things, always insisting that he and his partners had faith in Krueger up to the time of his death.

[Jacob Goldstein]

One of the things I want to point out about this is it's not just a generic hearing that the senators are doing to, you know, be morally superior and get in the papers and on the radio. It's 1933. Congress is about to write the securities laws that still today are the fundamental architecture of the way the stock market works in America. They're about to create the securities and Exchange Commission, the sec. They're about to require companies to issue audited financial statements, to follow generally accepted accounting principles.

[Robert Smith]

Gaap, gaap. Gap, gaap, gaap. Generally accepted accounting principles, not universally accepted, but generally accepted.

[Jacob Goldstein]

They're making the rules that companies still have to follow today. And they are making these rules in large part because of Ivar Kruger. The committee report for the securities act of 1933 has like 250 pages about IVAR Kruger. So maybe his biggest influence today arguably is not the two class share structure, off balance sheet financing, but the structure of securities law in America.

[Robert Smith]

And the matches.

[Jacob Goldstein]

And the matches. Billions of matches. Kruger is one of the most famous villains of one of the greediest eras in American history. And before I did this story, I just thought he ran a Ponzi scheme. That was all I knew about him. Guy who ran a Ponzi scheme. But that's not correct. His companies were shady and he was a criminal. He was a crook. But his companies were real businesses. And they continued on after his death. The trustees for International Match recovered enough to pay shareholders 32 cents on the dollar, a huge loss. But, you know, it's the Depression. Kruger and Toll got its investors more than half of their money back by 1937. Again, it's the Depression. They'd been getting Those dividends before 32, they did okay. And, you know, I think the lesson in this story is the line between Ponzi and real business is subtler than we want to think. Yes, he was a fraud, but also he created these businesses. And in fact, that case is made most strongly by Swedish Match, his first big match play. After Kruger died, Swedish Match kept making matches. They eventually got into the tobacco business. They started making little nicotine pouches that you put in your mouth. You know Zyn? Yes, I like to rise and grind. Entrepreneurs love.

[Robert Smith]

Haven't tried it.

[Jacob Goldstein]

That is Swedish Match. And partly on the strength of Zyn, in 2022, Philip Morris bought Swedish Match for $16 billion.

[Robert Smith]

Huh.

[Jacob Goldstein]

The deal went through. The company's books were solid.

[Robert Smith]

I guess Kruger would have been proud.

[Jacob Goldstein]

A very special thanks to my friend Lucas Cantor, composer, author, financier, who suggested that we do a story about the Match King. And I should say, the other key source for today's show, besides the series of articles in Fortune, is a more recent book called the Match King by Frank Partnoy. Today's show was researched and largely written by our producer, Gabriel Hunter Chang.

[Robert Smith]

Bravo.

[Jacob Goldstein]

The video is edited by Matt Nielsen. Yes, we're on YouTube. Watch us.

[Robert Smith]

Woo.

[Jacob Goldstein]

We were edited by our showrunner, Ryan Dilley. The show's engineered by Sarah Bruguer. You can email us at businesshistoryushkin fm. And please do. My favorite frankly email we've gotten lately was from Emmanuel in Tanzania. Emmanuel, great to hear from you. Thank you for listening. In Tanzania.

[Robert Smith]

And we were just talking about all of the rise and fall narratives that we've had on this show. So if you know of a fall and a rise narrative in business history, let us know. We'd love to do that too.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Yes, we want a fall and rise. So BusinessHistoryUshkin FM, or I'm on Twitter JacobGoldstein. I'm on LinkedIn. That's me.

[Robert Smith]

I'm RadioSmith and my name is Robert Smith.

[Jacob Goldstein]

My name is Jacob Goldstein. And Robert, I think I speak for both of us when I say we are extremely grateful to everyone for listening to this show. So thank you. Please tell a friend and we'll be back next week.

[Robert Smith]

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