Book Review: The Match King: Ivan Kreuger, the Financial Genius Behind a Century of Wall Street Scandals

Before there was National Student Marketing, Enron, or Bernie Madoff, there was Ivan Kreuger: the "Swedish Match King" of the 1920s and early 30s, who raised millions of dollars from investors through a byzantine maze of preferred stock, options, futures, inflated assets and hidden debt. The whole thing came crashing down in the wake of Kreuger's death, and it was the largest single-entity Wall Street scandal in history -- until the Enron/Worldcom era of the new millennium.

In The Match King: Ivan Kreuger, the Financial Genius Behind a Century of Wall Street Scandals, Infectious Greed author Frank Partnoy takes an in-depth look at the man and his empire, the result of six years of extensive digging through primary sources, since there is little in the way of reliable research on Kreuger's life and work.