SWEDEN: Grand Hotel

Stocks rose in Stockholm last week as the Swedish Treasury and private banks pooled $30,000,000 to tide over a leading Swedish bank hard hit by the suicide of overwrought Ivar Kreuger, president of the Swedish Match Trust (Kreuger & Toll). Next day Swedish stocks upped again as the Diet extended for another month the Kreuger & Toll moratorium.

But if Swedish confidence in Sweden’s fiscal strength was almost back to normal, there was still excitement in the Grand Hotel which faces King Gustav’s palace across a small lagoon.

Almost complacently a Swedish correspondent radioed:

“The Grand Hotel here is full of American observers, including a number of American brokers with whom Kreuger carried personal accounts. It is now known that Kreuger traded on six of the principal stock exchanges of the world, working through brokers who bought or sold gigantic blocks of stock for his account without mention of his name. It is even indicated that he bought such securities as oil stocks at times in order to bolster the market. He suffered gigantic losses in these operations and a large number of brokers who operated in his behalf are now seeking to collect what is due them.”