Is Ikea's boss behind the world's richest foundation?
Howard Lake | 15 June 2004 | News
The latest issue of Philanthropy in Europe magazine looks at the confusion surrounding the true value of the Stichting Ingka Foundation.
Issue 18 of Philanthropy in Europe magazine examines the wealth of Ingvar Kamprad, the Swede who founded furniture retail chain IKEA, and the Stichting INGKA Foundation which reportedly owns the company.
Ingvar Kamprad was declared the world’s richest man in April 2004 by a Swedish business journal. The weekly magazine, ‘Veckans Affärer’, claimed Kamprad had a personal fortune of approximately ‚€44 billion, significantly higher than Bill Gates, whom Forbes magazine recently valued at ‚€39 billion.
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However, Marianne Barner, an Ikea spokesperson, denied the reports, saying: “This is completely wrong. It’s a mistake that is made all the time. Estimating the value of the company, including all the stores, and saying it’s all Ingvar’s, that is totally wrong.”
According to Barner, it is not Kamprad but a Dutch-registered foundation, the Stichting INGKA Foundation, which owns the company. She added: “Ingvar Kamprad does not own Ikea. Ingvar donated the concern to the Dutch Stichting INGKA Foundation in 1982.”
If the Foundation is indeed Ikea’s owner, and therefore controlling assets of up to ‚€44 billion, it would far outstrip any other foundation in the world in wealth and spending power. By contrast, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has assets of around ‚€20 billion, and its nearest European rival, the UK’s Wellcome Trust held assets standing at ‚€14.2 billion as of September 2003.
Charlotte Lindgren, an Ikea press spokesperson, stated that “the foundation is charitable” and that it was established by Kamprad to “find a long-term ownership structure for the company”. She added that the foundation funds different projects in the fields of design and architecture as well as supporting a cancer organisation in Sweden. There has been a well-publicised donation of ‚€27.4 million to fund the establishment of the Ingvar Kamprad Designcentrum at Lund University of Technology, which was inaugurated in autumn 2002.
However, more in-depth evidence of donations is sketchy, according to Philanthropy in Europe, and it is likely that such speculative projections of the foundation’s wealth are inaccurate. Bo Pettersson, who wrote the original Veckans Affärer article, estimates that the foundation is probably only worth around ‚€12 to ‚€15 billion.
Philanthropy in Europe’s latest issue also includes the first ever survey of philanthropy by Poland’s richest individuals, analysis of Sweden’s other rich givers, and a focus on rich philanthropists from Ireland, Canada and the UK.
About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.