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Comment by ptr | Hacker News Reader

"No single Swede comes close to the epic wealth of a Bill Gates or a Warren Buffett." -- wasn't Ingvar Kamprad (of IKEA fame) more wealthy than Gates at one point? Due to some currency being strong, iirc.

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If I recall correctly, the ownership of IKEA is quite intricate, with Swiss foundations and what have you in the mix. Mainly for tax purposes I think - there was quite a controversy here in Sweden a few years back regarding this.

I believe that the wealth that Ingvar Kamprad ultimately controls is substantially larger than what a look at Forbes 500 might indicate, but perhaps that is not uncommon.

Back in 2006 The Economist had a reasonably in-depth article on IKEA's corporate structure, http://www.economist.com/node/6919139

Thanks! Just skimmed it for now but will definitely read it later.

So I was wrong in naming Switzerland - should've mentioned the Netherlands, Luxembourg, the Netherlands Antilles and Curaçao instead.

Hans Rausing of TetraPak is currently worth $11B according for Forbes. That's fairly close to Buffett's $55B.

In the same way that 20k a year and 100k a year are fairly close salaries ;)

11 digits and 11 digits are the same order of magnitude, at least.

Kamprad in on par with Buffet if you belive Bloomberg.

http://www.bloomberg.com/billionaires/2013-10-31/cya

True. He probably doesn't tax to Sweden and thus doesn't show up on the list.

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