| TranslateGoogle | Chronology Kreuger. |
| 1880 | 2 Mars - Born on Östra Sjögatan 4, Kalmar by the Baltic Sea. |
| 1886 | The little boy seem to have a photographic memory. School is fun. |
| 1898 | Student examination. Festivitas. |
| 1900 | Exam as construction engineer in Stockholm with high marks. Want to marry his Norwegian girlfriend but her guardian says no, due to Kreugers financial shortcomings. Goes to New York and works in different construction companies. |
| 1902 | Visits New Orleans and saves a girl from drowning in the Mississippi. In Storyville he listens to Buddy Boldens jazzband, and for the rest of his life he comes to like jazz. When he leaves New Orleans he is awarded a medal "only a hero will give his life for others". Works in Vera Cruz, Mexico, after a visit to Havana, on construction of a bridge, were the working force gets the yellow fever. All but Ivar Kreuger and one of his colleges dies. He gets an resistant eye infection, thinking he will become blind. |
| 1903 | Back in New York. Works with M.N.Pott & Co. with his friend Anders Jordahl. Jordahl goes to Johannesburg Transvaal, as chief engineer for the building of Hotel Carlton (the biggest hotel in the world) and Kreuger goes, for the construction of the iron skeleton of the building, to Bürbacher Hutte, Germany, and thereafter to Johannesburg. During the work at Hotel Carlton Kreuger invests their savings into a restaurant. The diamond trade in Johannesburg is booming after the Boer war and business accelerates. In Johannesburg Kreuger gets a telegram from the other end of the world - - his loved one is dead. |
| 1904 | Travels from Transvaal along the African East Coast. Visits Daar es Salam and goes to India. |
| 1905 | Back in Europe. Studies in Paris (language, history,
literature,
law) and goes to New York, Chicago and San Francisco In Denver, Colorado he is
studying the mine fields and the mining business. Back in New York he works with Fuller
Construction Company, NM Pott & Co. and Consolidated Engineering and
Construction Co. as chief engineer for the construction of Humboldt Stadium, New York, Metropolitan Life Tower, Plaza Hotel, St. Regis Hotel, Hotel Carlton and the Flatiron Building in cooperation with the architect Daniel Burnham. |
| 1907 | Goes back to Sweden after finishing his job. Bringing with him "the Kahn method"- a new method for building with concrete. He makes success with his building company Kreuger & Toll. He revolutionizes Scandinavian building methods. He starts companies in Russia and Finland. |
| 1912 | Gets the contract to build the Stockholm City Hall. Kreuger & Toll builds the Olympic stadium in Stockholm and participates in the Swedish euphoria after becoming best European nation in the Stockholm Olympic Games. |
| 1913 | Takes with great hesitation on the reconstruction of the Swedish match industry. |
| 1917 | In Russia. Leaves St Petersburg in the middle of the revolution when the Russian Bolsheviks confiscates all private property including that of Kreuger & Toll. Introduces Swedish Match AB on the international market. |
| Now begins a decade of fabulous success. Step by step he gets the world monopoly for matches. He buys 10 acres of central Berlin, Unter den Linden/ Friedrichstrasse. He founds the IMCO (International Match Corporation) in United States, which buy that same real estate from Kreuger & Toll. By transforming the marks to dollars he profits when mark goes down and dollars up and invests in new segments of the world industry. He buys factories, forests, mines, real-estate all over the world. And the shares, state obligations and participating debentures he is emitting are soaring. Nothing succeeds like success. Ordinary people trust him and put their family savings in his hand. Kreuger is a winner! Kreuger stock is subsequently seen as an absolute safe investment, with a 30 % annual gain. He becomes the prince of the worlds first global finance state. The Kreuger debenture is the currency of that finance state. | |
| 1927 | He offers La France a $ 75 mil low interest loan and French economy recovers and high interest loan to US banker Morgan could be repaid. For this he gets his second, more famous, medal - The great cross of the Legion of Honor. ( 1996 $ index » 800) |
| 1928 | He takes his speedboat on the Stockholm Waters in speeds over 50 knots to Ängsholmen in Kahnholmsfjärden where he gives parties for the sphere of people that surrounded him - inventors, businessmen, politicians, princes and princesses, artists and jazz bands. A long row of national states, including the USSR, undersign the Briand-Kellogg pact, but Joseph Stalin, as the de facto soviet dictator, turns down a most generous loan offer from the Kreuger Trust in association with, among others, Lee, Higginson & Co., National City Company, Guaranty Trust of New York, Dillon, Read & Co., Brown Brothers & Co., Clark Dodge & Co., N.M. Rothschild & Sons, Deutsche Bank, Warburg & Co., Mendelssohn & Co., Reichs-Kredit-Gesellschaft, Hope & Co., Schweizerischer Bankverein, Banque de Commerce de Bâle, Pictet & Cie, Société Générale de Belgique– a one billion dollar low interest loan, the biggest loan offer in history! |
| 1929 | 23 Oct. Despite severe warnings he offers Germany a $125 mil loan and partakes in the Young conference offering $ 60 mil more - money strictly guided to non military projects to stabilize the internal market. But this generosity is not at all in the like of Stalin and now he faces the direct opposition of two of the worlds most powerful enemies - the Banker Morgan of the United States of America and dictator Stalin of the Soviet Russia, with its state financial global ambitions. In addition to that Ivar Kreuger eventually opposes the nazi- and fascist militarists with his constructive actions. |
| 1929 | 24 Oct. The stock market crash on Wall Street, followed by "the black week", when a financial cataclysm ruined thousands of families in the deepest baisse ever on the international market. In the Dreufus bank of Paris two bankers are convicted for "blanking" - selling Kreuger-paper deposited in the bank, without Kreugers approval, driving the course down even more, and when the papers are to be delivered, buy them back to a lower course! One of the oldest tricks on the stock market - baisse speculations - to it´s more or less legal aspects, proven to be used by the Rothschild's three or four times during their rise to European financial power (for example after Waterloo, June the 20:Th 1815 and during the Aachen conference, November the fifth, 1818). But Kreuger not only kept his positions to the astonishment of the financial inner circles, his global enterprise grew even bigger. He truly soared above the fluctuations of the market - which also had been his outspoken goal for many years. |
| 1930 | The Kreuger trust expands and gets with L M Ericsson hold of gross shares of the telecommunication market. And with SCA the Kreuger trust controls nearly 30% of the world market in cellulose The English motor papers show the amazed public photos of the specially made Rolls Royce, Phantom ll, which Kreuger has ordered - the most expensive car in the world. Aristid Briand gets the Nobel Peace Price and he and Ivar Kreuger is discussing how to implement the Kellogg-Briand Pact that outlaws war - once and for all! |
| 1931 | Kreuger is still buying and no sector of the concern is sold
out. He owns the richest gold mine in Europe, Boliden, and half of the best iron mines in
the world, Wabana, Algarrobo, Timesrit. Ouenza, Zaccar, Rar-el-Madèn, Kiirunavaara
(LKAB), Gränges - Stora Kopparberg. |
| 1932 | Albert Einstein, in February, held speeches in the USA (St. Barbara, Pasadena etc)
proposing a sudden disarmament of all national states and the foundation
of a super national peace keeping force. At the same time Ivar Kreuger met
the President of the USA in the White House. Baisse speculations against the concern continues and banker Morgan (ITT, US Steel) tries to knock down Kreuger and with the help of colonel Behn he almost succeeds by claiming the inhibition of the contract to buy a gross part of Ericsson Telephone Company and money back in tree days - counted from the day before the Washington Day. That is three days of closed banks and three holydays. But Kreuger can raise funds with help of Swedish government and with the presentation of his latest secret assets (Diamond Match, Ohio Match, Boliden etc.) the American investors are reassured, and the financial problems are solved. The first week in March Kreuger leaves New York on the ocean liner Ile de France and at the 12:Th of March Kreuger dies, probably stabbed in his hart (and probably drugged) in his apartment on rue 5 Victor Emanuel lll, in Paris. A 9mm Browning was found in his left hand and the official version of what expired claims that Kreuger shot himself in the heart. The gun itself disappeared in the subsequent investigations. No bullet was ever found. No shot was ever heard. The alleged suicidal gun was bought the day before the murder, at Renette-Gastinnes small arms shop, by someone signing in as Ivar Kreuger, while the real Kreuger attended a meeting, at hotel Maurice, with banker Rydbeck and manager Littorin. Despite the request of the relatives no autopsy was allowed and the remains was cremated in a hurry after the arrival to Stockholm. The Kreuger diaries was officially burned. The last night in Paris, in an orgy of flowers, he was accompanied by his Finnish fiancé (they were about to get married), she witnessed: "he was happy that night". John Maynard Keynes: |
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