Hugo Stenbeck

"The prevailing image of Jan Stenbeck was shattered, distorted, as if this capitalist was made of such strange material that his mere presence in the Swedish machinery caused panic reactions. (It took a while before I learned that his father Hugo Stenbeck, Kinnevik’s founder, in his time caused partly similar reactions within social classes high enough to care.) Rejection mechanisms are interesting. What a society cannot bear tells a lot about that society."

"But in the spring of 1997, I didn’t even have a real clear idea of what Korsnäs was. I hadn’t driven through the forests and felt the mesmerizing, stunning power of mile after mile of well-groomed company forest. I didn’t know that Korsnäs borders Sandvik, so the forest and steel Kinnevik, which Jan Stenbeck inherited from his father Hugo and gained control over in a fight with his sisters, was a real small kingdom, a principality, also geographically."