Marcus Wallenberg

"But when negotiations for new loans began, he was still cold. He argued that Ruben and Holger themselves were to blame for the hopeless situation they had put themselves in. They had started the companies without any capital of their own. Now, Marcus Wallenberg argued that there were only two possible ways out for them: either to list the group on the stock exchange or to sell off a part of it."

"While Ruben showed great satisfaction in finally having removed Holger from the circle of owners, he was also relieved that he wanted to stay on the board. He knew Holger’s good name meant a lot for the opportunities to take up new loans at Tetra Pak. He therefore quickly wrote to Marcus Wallenberg to inform him about the stock takeover, but also to emphasize that Holger would remain on the board. “A limited cooperation will therefore continue, which I am pleased to see,” he wrote in the letter. With the purchase of Holger’s shares, only one step remained for Ruben before the plan for a family-run empire, with his sons as the sole owners, could be realized: he had to remove the remaining six small owners. Therefore, he soon made deals with Torsten Jeppsson and Erik Wallenberg. They sold their shares at nine times par. Harry Järund, Gunnar Brime, and Erik Torudd, however, resisted the Rausing buyout proposals. None of them wanted to sell at the price Ruben had proposed. Erik Torudd did not want to sell at all. Not at any price."

"The statement was completely made up. In fact, Tetra Pak was utterly unsellable since it did not have a developed method to show. Holger couldn’t believe his ears when he heard what Ruben said. Ruben had made a big blunder. Marcus Wallenberg fully understood that as the company was, Ruben and Holger would never get a penny for it. The argument backfired on Ruben himself, as Marcus Wallenberg thought it was ridiculous and only showed that Ruben was desperate for more money for operations. And if there’s anything that triggers alarm bells for an experienced banker, it’s when someone reveals their desperation."

"Thoughts of a dynasty began to take shape. One of the few people Ruben admired and looked up to was Marcus Wallenberg, and when he saw how the Wallenberg family operated, he wanted his own family to be the same. A dynasty where one generation took over from the next. And the family was held together by a superior common interest."

"“Finally, others are beginning to see the pattern that I see myself. Now, I have finally managed to get over the threshold,” was the conclusion that Ruben reached while he followed Marcus Wallenberg out through the headquarters."

"They also did not want to list any of their other companies on the stock market, since Tetra Pak’s poor finances had also dragged down their value. Thus, they would not be able to raise enough money from an IPO of them either. Eventually, they concluded that the only thing they could do was to sell Åkerlund & Rausing and thereby save Tetra Pak, at least for a while. For Ruben, deciding to sell Åkerlund & Rausing was relatively easy. On one hand, he was most interested in working on new projects, on the other hand, Holger had closed the company’s cashbox for Tetra Pak. Ruben simply could not withdraw more money from Åkerlund & Rausing to finance the further development of Tetra Pak. Another major contributing reason for deciding to sell Åkerlund & Rausing was that they had noticed that the company’s revenue curve had begun to flatten out. The company had been first in the market with disposable paper packaging and had thrived in the rapidly growing market. But now there were several competitors, and the market was largely cornered. Holger and Ruben had no choice. Enskilda Banken was pressing them through CEO Marc Wallenberg, Marcus Wallenberg’s eldest son. He refused to lend more money to Ruben’s and Holger’s company. Instead, he demanded that they find money elsewhere."

"The difficulties were never known outside a very narrow circle, but an outsider who was concerned about the conglomerate’s condition was Marcus Wallenberg. In his eyes, Tetra Pak began to constitute a source of worry, as the company was consuming an increasingly large part of Åkerlund & Rausing’s resources. The overall picture made him wonder about Enskilda Bank’s lending to the Rausing/Crafoord corporate group. Marcus Wallenberg was extremely well-informed about the group’s condition, partly through Göte Engfors who sat on the Åkerlund & Rausing board, and partly because over the years he had become friends with Ruben."

"However, even though Ruben managed to calm Marcus Wallenberg, Holger and others in the corporate management began to worry even more. Costs were escalating significantly and the organization was functioning worse and worse. It didn’t seem like Ruben saw what was happening. With his extravagant nature, he had neither the interest nor the patience to engage in more mundane tasks such as controlling the economy or monitoring cost and revenue development."

"When Ruben received the invitation, he immediately understood what it was about. Wallenberg definitely did not make it a habit to invite people just for pleasant social gatherings – there was always a practical reason. Ruben also understood why Marcus Wallenberg was worried. Since the beginning in the early thirties, Ruben’s company had been underfunded because he had never had his own money to invest in them. But now he would explain to Wallenberg how to build up the company’s own capital. He was filled with confidence as he packed his bag on a beautiful September day to head to Vidbynäs."

"We acquired control over Forsinvest, a publicly traded company, at a price that was at least thirty percent too high. I was sold Forsinvest in the fall of 1984 by a bank, but the decision was mine, as well as the blame. What was in the company's archives the bank probably did not fully know either. Forsinvest had played an important role in the power shift after Marcus Wallenberg's death in 1982, in which I also contributed, complicating the further development of a positive relationship with the powerful clan and my investment operation."