(Forbes) NEW YORK - A Swedish magazine created quite a furor this past weekend when it reported Ikea founder Ingvar Kamprad was worth $52.5 billion, more than Microsoft's Bill Gates. The news was picked up in publications around the world. Ikea later issued a terse press release stating that the information was incorrect, based on an evaluation of the entire Ikea Group. It then claimed that Kamprad doesn't own the group.
Based on Forbes' estimates, Kamprad is very rich, but not as rich as the Swedish news weekly Veckans Affaerer estimates (nor as poor as Ikea suggests). The self-made Swede ranked No. 13 in the world, worth $18.5 billion, in our 2004 Billionaires list. That was a jump of $5.5 billion from the previous year, thanks largely to the strength of the Swedish krona against the dollar. But it was far short of Gates and his $46.6 billion.
This furniture fortune is certainly complicated. Kamprad has shrouded his business in an opaque collection of trusts and holding companies, in part to shelter Ikea from Sweden's confiscatory taxes and death duties. But after seven years of delving into the fortune, we feel we have come up with a fair and conservative valuation method.
Ikea
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