The Match King

by Partnoy, Frank

• ISBN13: 9781586487430
• ISBN10: 1586487434
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2009-04-13
• Publisher: Public Affairs

Summary

At the height of the roaring '20s, Swedish migrant 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, 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 re-think our ideas about the wisdom of crowds, the invisible hand, and the free and unfettered market.

Author Biography

Frank Partnoy is the author of F.I.A.S.C.O.: The Inside Story of a Wall Street Trader and Infectious Greed: How Deceit and Greed Corrupted the Financial Markets. He has worked as an investment banker at Morgan Stanley and a corporate lawyer, and has testified as an expert before both the United States Senate and House of Representatives. A graduate of Yale Law School, he currently teaches law at the University of San Diego.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. ix
Coming to America	p. 1
Getting to Lee Higg	p. 15
The Speech	p. 29
Trouble at Home	p. 46
The Green Eye Shade	p. 59
Poland First	p. 70
Le Boom	p. 91
The Match Palace	p. 112
A Weekend in Germany	p. 135
One Last Chance	p. 156
Coming Back to America	p. 179
Death in the Air	p. 193
Greatness?	p. 201
Coda	p. 218
A Note on Sources and Acknowledgements	p. 227
Bibliography	p. 230
Notes	p. 236
Index	p. 263
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