Mr. Ivar Kreuger The suicide of Mr. Ivar Krcuger in
Paris on Sattirday was a pitiful close to one of the most remaikablelinsiness careers of our time. He was only fifty-two. In twenty years, starting with his father's match factory in SWeden, he' had built up a colossal industrY, controlling four- fifths of all the match factories in the world. His poliey was to lend impoverished States large saris in return for the monopoly of match manufacture and sale; and his firm was thus interested in forty-three countries, including most European nations. The plait was Napoleonic but not unsound, provided always that interest on the loans could be paid. But the inter- national crisis, -the Gennan moratorium and the' re- strictions imposed on foreign trade by one country after
another during the past year brought ever-increasing difficulties for Mr. Kreuger's vast concerns. Ill-health, overwork and worry drove bins in a rash moment to take his own life. The Swedish Government has taken prompt steps to safeguard the interests of the Swedish Match Corporation and of Kreuger and Toll, the holding cons pany, and there is reason to hope that Mr. Kreugees enterprises will survive him. He was a pioneer of the international undertakings which will doubtless be more common in the future, and which already show: that trade is superior to national divisions.
* * * *
Previous page
