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Match King Ivar Kreuger, The Financial Genius Behind a Century of Wall Street Scandals

The Match King: Ivar Kreuger, The Financial Genius Behind a Century of Wall Street Scandals

By Frank Partnoy

Partnoy writes an all-too prescient parable of how unregulated markets, greed, and unchecked ambition can wreak havoc on an economic system.

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Book Information

Publisher: PublicAffairs
Publish Date: 03/09/2010
Pages: 288
ISBN-13: 9781586488123
ISBN-10: 1586488120
Language: Eng

What We're Saying

December 15, 2009

The 800-CEO-READ Business Book of the Year Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System—And Themselves by Andrew Ross Sorkin, Viking Books, 624 pages, $32. 95 Even though Too Big to Fail was written during the same year the financial collapse occurred, Andrew Ross Sorkin has written what we predict will be the definitive book on the subject. Sorkin not only tells a gripping “perfect storm” story—reporting the gory details as our 401k’s disappeared and our financial system became nationalized—but he humanizes the players as well, resulting in an imminently readable, albeit lengthy, book. READ FULL DESCRIPTION

December 14, 2009

Jack was asked—along with author and editor-at-large Bo Burlingham, Inc. 's Leigh Buchanan, columnist Joel Spolsky, and Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh—to recommend books for Inc. Magazine's list of The Best Books for Business Owners of 2009. READ FULL DESCRIPTION

October 29, 2009

Season of the Lists

By Porchlight

It must be the season of the lists, yeah, because Publishers Weekly has announced their top 10 books of 2009. One business title made their list—Matthew B. Crawford's Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work, released by penguin Press. READ FULL DESCRIPTION

October 26, 2009

The Match King: Ivar Kreuger, the Financial Genius Behind a Century of Wall Street Scandals by Frank Partnoy, PublicAffairs, 272 Pages, $26. 95, Hardcover, April 2009, ISBN 9781586487430 When reading The Smartest Guys in the Room, the outstanding book by Bethany McLean that looks into the Enron debacle, you will learn about an accounting term called “mark to market. ” Not being an accountant, my simplified understanding of the concept is that when you purchase a product for $100 and you believe you can sell the product for $200 in five years, you put the sale price on your books at the expected selling price instead of the actual purchase price. READ FULL DESCRIPTION

August 12, 2009

The longlist for the 2009 Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award has been announced. The press release states that "The award is designed to highlight the book that provides the most compelling and enjoyable insight into modern business issues, including management, finance, and economics. " The books on the longlist are: Animal Spirits: How Human Psychology Drives the Economy, and Why It Matters for Global Capitalism by George A Akerlof, Robert J Shiller Clever: Leading Your Smartest, Most Creative People by Rob Goffee, Gareth Jones Free: The Future of a Radical Price by Chris Anderson Good Value: Reflections on Money, Morality and an Uncertain World by Stephen Green House of Cards: A Tale of Hubris and Wretched Excess on Wall Street By William D Cohan (Cohan won the award two years ago for his first book, The Last Tycoons. READ FULL DESCRIPTION

June 14, 2012

Wait: The Art and Science of Delay by Frank Partnoy, PublicAffairs, 304 pages, $26. 99, Hardcover, June 2012, ISBN 9781610390040 Frank Partnoy won the Biographies & Narratives section of our 2009 800-CEO-READ Business Book Awards for his outstanding history of Ivar Krueger in The Match King. I am a big fan of Biographies, so I was partial to it, but his was one of the best I’ve read in recent years. READ FULL DESCRIPTION

Full Description

At the height of the roaring '20s, Swedish 'migr' 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.

About the Author

Frank Partnoy is the author of F. I. A. S. C. O. , Infectious Greed , and The Match King. Formerly an investment banker at Morgan Stanley and a practicing corporate lawyer, he is one of the world's leading experts on market regulation and is a frequent commentator for the Financial Times , the New York Times , NPR, and CBS's 60 Minutes.

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