Ahlström: Copenhagen Office to Dodge Swedish Capital Controls

“In the beginning, he had no fund, so financing had to be arranged for each individual deal, which took a lot of energy. It was still forbidden for foreigners to invest in Swedish companies without government permission. Therefore, Ahlström rented a small office in Copenhagen, where the rules were more liberal because Denmark was in the EU.”

“Procuritas, as he named his company, made deals worth several billion kronor between 1986 and 1990. The biggest—and worst—was the purchase of the match and tobacco company Swedish Match from the forestry company Stora. Together with a couple of other financial players, they bought the company out from the stock exchange in 1989. – We made all the classic mistakes; we paid too much, we borrowed too much, and we assumed we could quickly sell several of the subsidiaries—lighters, matches, and razor blades—to get money and pay off part of the debt. The forecasts were derailed by the Gulf Crisis, when Iraq invaded Kuwait. Business came to an abrupt halt, nothing could be sold, interest costs accumulated. The other owners wanted out and “we were too small to decide, so we were forced to sell too early; otherwise, it could have turned out well,” Mikael recalls. After that, he was more cautious about leveraging the companies. In this way, he differed from his successors.”