The man whose life forms the basis of this book was a master of investor psychology.
The match king had perpetrated the greatest financial fraud in history.
The world now saw an epic, a villain, not a hero, a schemer, not a planner.
A destroyer, not a builder.
Ivar became the Judas of the financial markets.
Ivar's company suffered a similar fate to his body.
Panicked, selling reduced them to dust.
Less than two weeks after the public learned of Ivar's death, investigators from Price Waterhouse declared that his companies were insolvent.
The swedish committee investigating his construction firm concluded that its 1930 balance sheet grossly misrepresented the true financial position of the company.
Investigators estimated the loss at 2 billion, more than Sweden's national debt.
The accountant said Ivar had treated his public companies as personal assets.
He had wired millions of dollars among secret subsidiaries and arranged for dubious intercompany transactions.
The details were too complex to unravel.
At first, it was difficult for some people to accept Ivar as a fraud.
He had helped Europe avert a financial crisis.
He was a friend and advisor to government leaders, including the american president, Herbert Hoover.
At the height of the roaring twenties, Ivar Kroger was one of the richest men in the world.
Through an ingenious plan to sell stakes in foreign matchstick monopolies to american investors, he built up a tremendous enterprise, paying impressive dividends to his investors.
His company was one of the few to survive the crash of 1929.
But shortly after his death in 1932, it became clear that the great financier was not all that he had seemed.