#377 Expanding A Family Dynasty: Marcus Wallenberg Jr.

Transcript from https://podmenti.com/t/f14baa5b646d16a4

There's two ideas in this book that are repeated. Marcus Wallenberg Jr. prioritized investing in technology.
and surrounding yourself with great people. That is actually something that
multiple generations of the Wallenbergs would repeat.
And I've been telling you lately that there's a lot of similarities that I noticed between people like Steve Jobs and Jeff Bezos.
And Jensen Wong last week.
And now I would add Marcus Swallenberg Junior to that list as well.
And it starts with Jeff Bezos' very first shareholder, where Jeff Bezos emphasizes the importance of having the very best team.
He wrote.
Setting the bar high in our approach to hiring has been and will continue to be
the single most important element of Amazon's success. You will hear
Here, Marcus Wallenberg Jr. see something very similar to that.
Jeff's focus on talent is very similar to this quote that I actually found
that Steve Jobs gave in an interview that very same year in nineteen ninety seven. This is what Steve said.
says I think I've consistently figured out who the really smart people were to hang around with.
You must find extraordinary people.
The key observation is that in most things in life the dynamic range between the average quality and the
And the best quality is at most two to one.
But in the field that I was interested in.
I noticed the dynamic range between what the average person could accomplish
And what the best person could accomplish was fifty
Or a hundred.
to one given that you were well advised.
to go after the cream of the cream.
You want to build a team
That pursues
The A plus players. That is exactly
What Ramp did.
Ramp has the most talented technical team in their industry. Becoming an engineer, Ramp, is nearly impossible. In the last 12 months, they hired only 0.23%.
of the people that applied. When you use ramp
It means you have the top tier technical talent and some of the best AI engineers working on your behalf.
twenty four seven.
to automate and improve all of your businesses.
financial operations and they do this all on a single
platform. That means the longer that you use ramp,
The more efficient your company becomes.
in the end of that interview, Steve Jobs added one thing. He said a small team
Of A plus players can run circles.
around a giant team of B and C players from a customer's perspective
What does a team of A plus players sound like? It sounds like this customer review that I read.
Which says that ramp
Is like having a teammate
who you never need to check in on
Because they have it handled.
As you're about to hear, Marcus Wallenberg Jr. pushes all of his companies to
to invest in technology that provide massive
Productivity gains. If he was alive today.
He would use ramp.
Ram's website is incredible.
Make history's greatest entrepreneurs proud by going to ramp.com.
to learn how they can help your business today. That is ramp.com.
One more thing I want to tell you about before we jump into this episode is Vesto. A lot of my friends are using Vesto to see all of their company accounts in one view.
So Vesto helps you connect and control.
All of your business bank accounts from one dashboard. I know the founder, Ben.
I'm friends with them. We've spent a bunch of time together. We've had dinner. We've gone on walks.
And have offered to help him by introducing him to some of my other friends that I thought
would benefit from using Vestos. So I called one of my friends
He said, Listen, David, I will meet
Anyone.
That you want me to.
But I will tell you, I have to tell you.
That we say no to over ninety percent of the software that we're pitched.
And yet a week later I hear back
And he said that Ben and Vesto are great and that they signed up.
So I asked him.
Can you please ask your team to explain the benefits that they get from Vesto?
in their own words. So I'm going to read this text message exchange.
Where his team now in his own words
Or in their own words, rather.

Me and you.
what the benefit is that they get from Vesto.
It says it provides us the ability to view all of our bank accounts and loan accounts on one platform.
with a single sign on. It makes it much easier to grant access to users in one place as opposed to 20 different banks. So I text back, what do they do before Vesto? And this was the response.
We have twenty plus different bank loggings across five accountants. We literally use twenty-one banks. So every bank has an account and a loan that multiple people need access and views to.
Just to log in and see everything would take hours.
And all the in different taps.
So if you have multiple businesses, if you have multiple accounts, go to Vesto.com.
and schedule a demo with the founder Ben and tell him David
sent you. That is Vesto with a V, Vesto.com.
The link will also be down in the show notes.
And now let's get to the episode.
Daniel Eck, the founder of Spotify, was kind enough to invite me to come to Sweden.
And since I was gonna go to Swim, I figured I'd wanna read and learn more.
About
The most powerful family
In Sweden.
Uh, it's the Wallenberg family. It's actually a hundred and seventy year old
Family Dynasty. So the book that I want to talk to you about today.
It's called Furthering a Fortune. Marcus Wallenberg
Swedish banker and industrialist.
And it was written by Ulf Osun.
So Marcus Wallenberg Junior was known as MW. So that's going to refer to him throughout the entire conversation that you and I are going to have.
I do want to jump r right into his life.
I do think there's a few things I should like some background I should give you about the Wallamber family,'cause he's the third generation.
And there's just a couple of ideas that I think were laid, like the foundation laid very early.
in the very early uh days of the family dynasty, that Marcus definitely built upon, although as you'll see
He was fine with the responsibility of
continuing the tradition and expanding the dynasty, but he was much more of an in like an innovator.
than an administrator as somebody, you know, born wealthy.
Uh you might suspect.
That okay, we're already rich, we're kind of just gonna maintain it. He was not interested in that. He was interested in technology, innovation, and drastically expanding the family fortune.
Now there is a couple of ideas that he never deviated from, so
There there's a line at the very beginning of the book where
uh his actual uncle says long experience in this bank has taught us that we must almost exclusively put our trust in ourselves. So
The Wallenbergs, and this is mentioned multiple times throughout the book.
They always had more liquidity than other banks.
And they did never wanted to put themselves or find themselves in a position where they had to rely on the kindness of outsiders. I don't think you survive.
And thrive, really.
For a hundred and seventy years.
without being relatively conservative and having like this financial fortress. Remember this for later on because
When
Uh MW is a young man. His job, one of the jobs in the bank in the family bank.
Is the fact that he was handling all the loans.
for Evar Kruger.
Which I covered all the way back on episode three forty eight.
Which was
The biggest one of the biggest, maybe the biggest financial scandal
and financial collapse definitely in in Sweden's history, but in economic history in general.
And it is due to the conservative and prudent nature
Of the Wallenbergs.
And what they taught, you know, the third generation.
that they wind up I'll tell you about this later, but it's pretty crazy.
They actually held more collateral.
From Kruger?
than liabilities.
Where a lot of other banks and and the main competitor for the Wallenberg family was actually h his life and work was destroyed.
uh by his association with Ivor Kruger. So this idea it's like hey
You wanna have a ton of liquidity.
uh more liquidity than than than the other banks, and you don't want to put yourself in a position where you have to rely on the kindness of
outsiders. Another thing that is in the book and I also got to meet while I was in Sweden.
Some people
That had worked.
with the Wallenbergs for many, many years and
this came up over and over again, the fact that the family rarely
If ever sold.
In many cases, there's a bunch of problems in the businesses that they own and they invest in.
And they wind up owning these for decades, in some cases o over a century.
And w what they found is like in time
A lot of these problems can be solved or work themselves out.
Uh so it says the bank did not content itself. And when you hear the bank, you really have to think of the family, which again, there was no difference between
The way Marcus thought about it, the way his father, the way the rest of the family thought about it.
There's no difference between the bank and the family. The business and the family. The family is a business.
The business is a family.
Uh the bank did not content itself with writing off the lending losses, but continued to maintain its interest in its debtor companies.
In an attempt to rescue them.
And at some future date
Recover as much of the bad debts as possible.
So again, I wanted to bring that up right up because
They did this before MW is born, and you'll see MW does this and he actually carries on the tradition.
And really re rescues, restructures, combines a bunch of
companies that the family owned.
for an extremely long period of time.
Before
MW was born before he played a role, in fact.
in the the the family business, the family bank.
There's multiple examples where they tell the pe the Wallerberg family tells the employees that are working for them.
that this is a family business. It will be owned and controlled by the family.
And again they repeat.
uh that we must endeavor to build up as large reserves as possible in the bank. And in case you're listening to this and you want to perpetuate a family dynasty, I'm not gonna talk about the patriarch of the family.
Uh that the founder of the Family Dynasty, his name's A. O. Wallenberg.
But in case you're you're interested in the
Free family dynasty.
You might want to have lots of kids, cause A.O. Wallenberg had twenty one kids. So I want to jump right into
MW's life and
You're gonna see traits that he had when he was a kid.
That he continued his entire life.
Uh, they call there's a there's a funny line in the book where they said that MW was a self confident five year old.
Uh he showed signs of being argumentative and strong willed from a very early age.
He had a great need for independence and control. Remember, he's a kid. He's like this his whole life.
And he was way more defiant than his siblings.
Uh, they also said that he often got his own way thanks to his charm and powers of persuasion. So the family has essentially set up a track for all the kids.
Very early on.
Which for the most part MW
agrees to. He's like, Yeah, okay, my my
My fate, my destiny, is to work in the family business and to perpetuate this dynasty.
But he's also gonna have input and really push back on his father, even though he had a great relationship with his father.
But I wanna
give you an idea of like the kind of family we're dealing with where
They really there was no ceiling on their ambition or what they thought they could do.
So they actually the the school after he does some brief military training
MW's gonna go to school.
This the school is the Stockholm School of Economics.
And it's created by his family.
And the way I was thinking about this is when you when I went back and I you know, I reread my highlights over and over again before I sit down and talk to you.
And the second or third or fourth time I read this section, I was like, Oh, you know what?
What's really happening, the way I think about what's happening is
The Wallenberg family is starting this business school.
Right.
As a way to grow the entire pie.
and then take a percentage of that growing pie. So what I mean by that, growing the pie.
They're interested in making more business people, so they make more businesses.
If there's more businesses.
then they're going to own equity in some of those businesses and then have
uh a a relationship the b the family bank's gonna have a relationship with those businesses and
M Ws
Uh
Uncle was the one that started it and he says it is for knowledge and training that will raise the members of the commercial sector.
From the level of shopkeep shopkeepers and merchants, and allow them to attain the position of respect that they occupy in other countries, trying to build a more
sophisticated financial and business base inside Sweden.
He said.
This is my first
Last and only wish with this whole idea.
was to promote merchant trade. And so then I gotta bring up for the first time, and it won't be the last time.
There's a bunch of very really important personal traits that I think MW had.
It's i that's mentioned, you know, when he was a kid.
Teenager.
When he's eighty.
And he's still pushing the pace and outrun
many of the young people around him is this massive competitive drive.
This
insane level of energy.
He's constantly wanting to push things forward. He's addicted.
to technological change and and investing in technology up until the day he dies.
But what you realize is that he
The way
He approached business.
He approached everything that he did.
And so one of his great loves, really the one love he had in his life.
was business outside of uh of
Business though.
was tennis to the point where
You know, he becomes the Swedish doubles champion.
Uh he plays at Wimbledon, for God's sake.
But
There's n he there's nothing that he does.
That I would say that he does on like a recreational
level. He was not trying to be amateurus at all. He in fact he took
the the same intensity he applied to tennis, he applied to his work, and the same intensity applied to his work, he applied to his tennis. He's very intense, he's energetic, he's disciplined, he's physically fit, and he's very consistent.
So it talks about
The fact that
He would engage in intense physical training. So it's a tennis involved.
physical training which made him conscious of the importance of taking regular exercise. He never abandoned
His habit of doing physical exercises every morning.
Which stood him up in good steed for the hectic pace.
he would keep throughout his life.
Later in life he once subscribed himself
As a sportsman
who'd become a bank manager in his later days.
An important explanation of his successes in various fields was his intense
Competitive
drive. He loved to compete.
and believed in competition as a principle for development
and progress in business and in life.
And so one of my favorite parts about the book is the fact that there's all these letters
In the book.
back and forth between MW and his father. And you see the advice that his father has.
how MW kinda pushes back. But one thing that he doesn't push back, and I think this is actually good.
If you're born into a a situation like he is.
He writes to his father.
At the time MW is about twenty one years old and he knew that he was gonna go into the family bank. Right now he's gonna expand a way past finance and go he really thought of himself much more as like an industrialist. He was much more interested in industry than he was finance.
But he writes to his father something that's very interesting.
And I think there's a side idea here that you and I can benefit from. He says I do grant you father
That you were right about my career being determined.
There is but one possibility.

Progress.
To gain knowledge.
In other words,
To go.
forward. So at the very end of the book.
There's a line in the book.
This says MW.
was not given
to intro spection. This is one of
surprisingly like one of the most controversial observations that I have just about reading all these books.
Many of the great founders once that they know what they want to do.
I would argue that they actually have very low
levels of introspection to like almost no introspection.
And the reason that is important is because
Low introspection equals
More action.
And you see the importance of action and moving forward with the way he ends that lit letter.
These are very you know, Swedish people are very t typically very reserved.
I was shocked at how many
of the letters that MW is writing.
And he just used exclamation points.
Way more than I expected.
And he ends that letter to his father. Forward. Exclamation point. And one thing that MW did not have to think about was that the family was something that his father taught him, and that his father's father taught him, was that the family and the bank were one and the same thing. And that's definitely how
Uh MW thought about it. Now.
Once you're done with your military training, now you've finished with the Stockholm School of Economics.
This was very fascinating. He's like, Okay, I'm gonna map out you you can't just come into the bank. We're not just gonna make give you a uh
a a position of authority or, you know, put you right in the top.
The way the family trained the next generation, I absolutely loved, and I've seen this a few times too. They insisted that they have to learn from the ground up.
When when I went to read to you, if you listened to a few weeks ago when I covered
uh the bi two biographies of Hedy Green, who was the single largest individual financier in the world at the time.
The the way that she wanted to train
her son, the next generation, you know, because Hattie Green was fifth generation.
She did her family was rich for five generations before her.
She said, Okay, I want you to learn the railroads and you're gonna learn it, you know, even though I own the railroad, I could make you CO anytime I wanted or president anytime I want. No, you're not gonna do that.
You're gonna walk the goddam tracks.
You are going to cle literally gonna pull weeds and clean up. You're gonna do every single job. You are going to learn.
from the ground up.
So
What MW's father does
Is first of all they have
phenomenal network. Just wait till I read the the the banks that he's gonna become a trainee at.
But they he literally starts in the mail room. He starts doing the lowest level possible. So it says
His father had already started to plan the next step in his son's carefully mapped out career. Period.
Periods of training with foreign banks.
The work was monotonous.
with all the manual duties that formed part of everyday banking at the time, such as sorting, checking, counting, and writing everything by hand.
It provided, but this is why he's doing this for a son.
It provided a basic insight.
to the workings of the financial system.
So MW's father is sending him all over the world.
training in all these other banks, see how they do it, right?
He's doing it so he learns from the ground up, but he's also this is something that is repeated over and over again.
It's this maxim that I I've said to you before, relationships run the world.
His father talks about the fact that personal contacts were actually
even more important.
An even more important reason.
for training abroad.
And I think Marcus Wallenberg Senior would agree with that.
Over and over again. He's talking about
You need to prioritize the personal contacts.
gonna read this great advice that he gives to his son again, appearing in one of these letters that go back and forth between
uh father and son to out the book.
It is necessary to behave in a way befitting a well mannered member of an established family.
When MW was about to leave London, his father stressed how important it was
to clear out in a decent way.
You should pay visits or write.
To all those who've shown you some kindness, the most lasting relationships.
are created through paying attention and showing gratitude.
You should take a couple of extra days doing that. So it is when MW is in his early twenties.
That his dad sends him all over the world.
to study and to train.
in a bunch of different banks. Now
I'm gonna just give you this list because this is remarkable, and it really does speak to the relationships that the Wal Wallenberg family cultivate, and they did so over generations, and they still do do so.
So he trains MW is gonna study and train in
Peak.
Tay, which is in Switzerland.
Uh this bank still exists two hundred and twenty years after founding.
Then he's gonna go move on to Lazard.
Uh or Lazard maybe in London.
That was founded a hundred and seventy six years ago.
Uh in this bookshelf behind me I have a a a company history.
Of the Lazard Bank or Lazard Bank.
That I've each get to.
He then goes to Brown Brothers in New York.
And then credit Lyonnais in Paris.
And one thing that would have been obvious to MW about the fact that relationships on the world
During his training was the fact that L Lazard
They actually because of their long established
relationships.
with the Wallenberg family and the S C B, which is the family bank.
They Marcus Wallamber Senior was actually able to persuade them
persuade the management of the bank to take his son on as a trainee, which was totally against
The bank's procedures and principles.
And so up until this point, MW has kind of followed the path.
that his dad wanted him
to embark on and then we see his dad finds out really early and he probably knew this from when he was a kid.
that he's going to exert his own will.
And so he writes to his dad
Hey, guess what?
Uh I met a woman, I love her, and I'm getting married.
And so obviously if you're trying to perpetuate a family dynasty who your kids marry
is extremely important. And so there's a series of letters that go back and forth
about this impending marriage. And again, uh I'm gonna cut right to the chase, like MW
Now
and throughout his entire life is going to get what he wants. He is not going to be allow himself to be controlled by anybody.
But it is fascinating where you see
His father really trying to counsel his son.
And just how he thinks
Uh like
he he's writing a letter to his son about how he actually thinks about marriage that you know when you're in your ear twenties
You're not gonna have this perspective.
And so his father writes.
is the most natural thing in the world that a young man takes a fancy to a young lady.
However, it's important to decide whether or not his fancy shall be decisive for the rest of his life.
When young, one tends to believe in the one and only chance.
Experience
Will modify
This opinion.
A marriage is not only based upon a fancy. Once the first outburst of emotion has passed, a happy marriage
Requires a common outlook on life.
shared interest as well as mutual respect
Intolerance.
And then true to his personality, when MW writes to his father about wanting to get married
He said she just presents it as a fate accomplished like
Uh this I'm I'm making this decision. It's going to happen. It wind up does happening.
But again.
His father writes him in in return. He says
Uh he's like, I'm gonna approve, you know, of your decision, but the approval the approval's not given without reservation. So he says, I approve your decision and congratulate you wholeheartedly.
However, I do consider that a deferment is appropriate.
So that both parties have time for reflection.
I'm more than happy to see my boys getting married and continuing our esteemed family.
Experience shows
That is important not to make the wrong choice.
and be misled by one's feelings.
Further reflection
is recommended.
And then marriage is not the only place that he's gonna push back on his father again.
He's he was MW from time he's young till
time he's old. He's was way more interested in industry than he is finance. So
He's like okay, I've studied in these banks.
I don't want to sit in the banks anymore. I want to go out and see companies building things.
So his argument to his father was our own bank is heavily engaged in industry. It would therefore be better to spend a month and a half gaining experience in an IR foundry.
An iron foundry, a company in a forestry sector, an electrical company.
After that.
I could complete my bank training and then go to United States and visit more iron, steel, and electrical industries in the United States.
MW felt it necessary to demonstrate a certain amount of independence towards his father. After all.
should not MW himself
Ultimately take the decision.
on its own future.
So the book talks a lot about what they call the Wallenberg Family Sphere, which I absolutely love that description.
And in the most simple terms
It is the bank.
Uh the holding company
Yeah, which is called Investor A B, which is founded in nineteen sixteen.
is public and still exists to this day, in fact.
It is the second largest company.
in Sweden behind Spotify.
And then
What I would call the family office.
Yeah, which is really.
A complex web of companies and holding companies.
that manage the family fortune. You can actually see some of the structure on the family's website.
It's Wallenberg dot com.
But it's important for me to point out that this is a very like
oversimplified way to think about it because they're they have just this huge network
of companies and you'll see this as as we continue to go through the book.
Like just how complicated it can get.
But I want to read this section to you because this was what was taking place when MW starts his career in the family business. It is important to remember that the banking business was only one of the fields of activity in which the Wallenberg group was engaged.
There were at least two other principal activities which came under the family umbrella.
The family was directly involved in industrial ownership.
First through the rehabilitation of weaker companies in order to recover loan losses from their bank.
Secondly,
In the development of new companies.
that had the potential of becoming valuable customers of the bank in the future.
Much of their industrial activity was carried out through the holding company A B Investor, again, the one that still exists this day.
And it's subsidiaries.
backed by SEB, which is the family's bank.
backed by S C B's capital resources.
And this is a key point here, although dominated
by the Wallenberg family, the investor group of companies was formally kept separate from the bank.
So their bank and their main holding company is technically separate, but they still control both. A third line of business.
alongside the banking and industrial operations was the management of the family's assets.
Considerable growth was also achieved by the use of finance and holding companies
that could carry on financial activities on a larger scale
Using techniques not normally found in banking. That's why they have all these
Holding companies. These companies were known as quote unquote associated companies.
Which meant that they were formally independent of the bank.
But we're still closely linked to it.
Many of them were foreign companies.
Enjoying tax and foreign exchange advantages.
And the reason I think it's so important to like try to s simplify the s the family sphere.
Jinoka, you have the the the initial source of the family's wealth.
Bing a bank.
The way they grow.
the wealth being the holding company, and then you have all the the private, you know, the family office per se.
of the actual like the management of the family's assets. And I think those are the three primary
Uh like
components of the sphere. Now
There's probably an unlimited amount of companies within them. Like let me give you a perfect example of why I think it would be so difficult to actually put a put a
uh actual price on like how much wealth does this family have. Any and this goes for, you know, anything that's been compounding for a long period of time.
So later on in the book they're like fighting with uh the eventual
Nazi government in Germany over
one of their assets.
And this to me, this is like the perfect ex example of just how complicated and how widespread
Their family sphere went.
So the Wallenberg family
owns a plantation in Ecuador.
That plantation in Ecuador is run by a German limited liability company.
But the
Maine the principal owner
And the main shareholders
Is
The Wallenberg family in Sweden.
So an Ecuadorian plantation run by Germans, owned by Swedes.
And so three hundred pages into this book when you're reading about all these different companies
I mean MW is gonna sit
He's on 80 different boards. He's like the chairman of a board of like 30 something companies. I think we'll get to that a little bit, but the note I left myself when I got to this section is like, how many companies do they own?
It's almost impossible to know. And so that brings us to two main recurring themes. It's the fact that MW wants control and he's has an older brother.
And there's gonna be lifelong tension with his brother. In fact
He he said later on that whenever he decided anything
In his brother's absence, his brother would then come to the next meeting.
And try to change it immediately. So there's gonna be a b a bunch of conflict.
uh between those two for control.
throughout their entire lives. N W MW is the one that winds up winning that battle.
The second thing
That
uh is r something that reoccurs over and over again in this story in his life is the fact that he was
Extremely interested in technology. Again, he did not view himself
You know.
He was not an administrator. He was an innovator.
That's
was really important to him.
He stressed in his talks and in his management of his companies.
And the importance of technology. He says I imagine that economics
quite simply means making use of technology.
It is always possible to build up new industries on the basis of inventions.
We can only express the hope.
That we shall see new epoch making inventions.
Emanating from Sweden.
That will be the benefit of the world.
And then his next sentence is why that was important to him and then to his family.
If that comes about, we may rest assured

For their exportation.
would be made available within Sweden from the Wallenberg family and from the Wallenberg family bank.
So let me actually give you a practical example of this of the idea of moving into
A place where there's technological headwinds, okay.
And this idea that I mentioned earlier that they rarely, if ever, sell and they wind up just
being having a very long term
Point of view.
And the a lot of the problems that they have inside companies because they never sell.
They're able to work through given enough time. And so
The this is really a family case study for how problems should be handled inside of their companies.
And one of the most surprising things
That I learned from this book is they really of try to avoid letting bad investments die. There's a, you know, some people believe that.
you know, spend all your time on the big winners, kinda cut your losses, there's really
you know, no wrong way for this. It just depends on what you want to do.
But they the Wahlberg family, they spent a ton of time
Not letting their bad investments die.
And because they have such just long term horizon.
uh they're able to wait out for better times and and and opportunities.
So there's this company called Atlas and it says it's perhaps the best example of the perseverance of the Wallenbergs.
With regard to its industrial investments.
Within the family, this case has traditionally been regarded as
As a model
of how industrial problems should be handled.
This is where MW rapidly learned practical crisis management under the supervision of his father.
Atlas was a company
That it had been founded.
In eighteen seventy three
By the
Patriarch of the family. This is
Founded by A. O. Wallenberg.
In eighteen seventy three.
The reason he started the company is'cause in eighteen seventy three

the main technology of his day was the railroads, right? So they start Atlas for the purpose of producing equipment for a network of railways.
I'm gonna pause there. There's another maxim that jumps out when you study this family.
And that's don't let the money escape.
So if you're gonna start if a
If A. O. Wallenberg, any Wallenberg started a company, who do you think
is going to be that company's bank.
S E B was the Atlas's bank.
Atlas became the largest mechanical engineering company in Sweden.
taking up a lot of the bank's management's time and energy as well as a disproportionate share of its loan portfolio.
The company's first crisis occurred.
After the eighteen seventies.
With the decline of the railway industry.
So what do they do during the eighteen eighties and eighteen nineties?
Atlas was restructured.
two separate times. So this idea of restructuring
Consolidating and combining is something that the Wallenbergs do over and over again. Remember, they're not going to sell.
Uh so they they wind up changing from
Producing equipment for railroads.
into the manufacturing of air operated tools and compressors.
So around the time that Atlas switches from railroad equipment to pneumatic air compressor tools, okay?
Marcus Wallenberg Senior, MW's dad.
st they found the Wallenbergs found companies too. They make investments, they buy companies, they they start companies
He founded a company called A B Diesels. The idea was, hey, we're gonna manufacture engines.
Based on Rudolph Diesel's patent.
Right?
What they do is say, Hey, we're going to actually
consolidate Atlas into A B diesel.
So we're gonna combine the companies.
That combined company does well for a few years in large part because this is during World War One and there's a huge demand for their products.
After the war ends.
There's a depression in Sweden that hits both companies very hard.
So keep in mind this is fifty years.
After the founding of Atlas, they're still in control of the company.
They were thinking, Okay, maybe we need to close down the business
Completely.
They decide not to do that. They decide
Two
restructure it and then they have to lay off a bunch of workers. So they go down from about nine hundred
Employees down to three hundred.
They restructure the company, they write down the shares.
They still have full ownership and control.
So it says the family was again prepared
To wait for better times. That is a very important line.
because they have control and because they have financial resources and a long term
They have a long term perspective and they always had.
They can wait for better times.
Now what they realize is hey
Or
Compressor.
An air compressed tools division.
shows the greatest potential for growth.
And it's being pulled down by this diesel diesel engine division.
And so another thing that you'll see the Wallenbergs do over and over again is that's fine. We're not gonna sell the company, we're just gonna drop that bad business line.
And then we're gonna find a market that provides tailwinds. And this is what happens. The profits came instead.
from air operated tools and compressors, a market sector
that appeared to be expanding before the decade had ended.
Diesel engine manufacturing had been closed down.
And the march towards a position for the company as a world leader.
In the area.
of pneumatic technology had been initiated.
By investing in the cutting edge of technology and the international marketplace, MW chose a direction.
That would in the future
be central to his industrial philosophy.
Okay, moving on to another idea that the Wallenberg family repeats over and over again.
the importance of picking who you associate with carefully. I'm gonna start with an example of somebody that did not do this.
And it winds up destroying this guy's life and work. This is the the section on Eivre Kruger.
says Evar Kruger became very closely associated
With Oscar Rybbeck.
Who had headed
This other bank I'm not even gonna try to pronounce since nineteen seventeen, and who was the only person
who could really compete with Marcus Wallenberg Senior
For the title of Sweden's leading banker during the nineteen twenties.
Again, the reason this speaks to the importance of picking who you associate with carefully.
Evar Kruger is going to destroy
This guy's life and work.
The exact opposite is going to happen to the Wallenberg family. I mentioned earlier that MW managed the Ivar.
Eivar Kruger financial disaster extremely well.
The family bank had refused to loan Kruger more money before his empire collapsed, and when it did collapse, the bank actually had more collateral than liabilities.
I do think Evar Kruger is very important to study.
But I always did an episode on him. If you're interested in learning more, listen to episode three forty eight.
Which is about this book called The Match King Evar Kruger, the financial genius behind a century of Wall Street Scandals.
And I think in more ways than one
The Evar Kruger collapse actually demonstrates the shrewdness of the way the Wallenbergs
operated their business. So not only were they not taken down or destroyed by them, they actually as a result of the collapse of the Kruger Empire, the Wallenberg group was drastically expanded. And I'll just give you one example of this.
At the time where Kruger dies.
Some people think it was a suicide, some people think he was murdered.
But
Erickson was a very very precarious situation because Kruger was a majority shareholder in Ericsson.
And this again combines with another idea.
that the Wallenberg has is this extreme long term
outlook and uh the way the the Wahlberg family operates in this really long term way.
They actually still control
This company, Ericsson, a hundred years later, Erickson is jointly controlled.
by the Wallenbergs and this other bank
Called Handles Bacon.
And they they both acquired their voting strong A shares.
And thus control up Ericsson.
After the fall of Kruger.
And so before I move on to introduce this idea that they don't let the money escape, which is very fat was very fascinating to me.
Wanna put the notes from the book down real quick and I wanna just
Give you an update on where the Wallenberg family is.
Today.
says the Wallenberg family is one of Sweden's most prominent business dynasties.
Controlling a significant sphere. There's that word again.
significant sphere of influence in Swedish and Nordic businesses.
through their investment companies and foundations.
The core of their business empire centers around
Investor A B. This is what I mentioned earlier. It's the second most valuable
a public company in Sweden right now behind Spotify.
So this is the way they describe investor A B. It's their main investment company founded in nineteen sixteen.
Which holds large ownership stakes in major Swedish multinational companies like Ericsson in telecommunications.
Atlas and industrial equipment.
A B B in engineering.
AstraZeneca and pharmaceuticals and SEB in banking.
The Wallenburgers are known for their long-term investment approach and active ownership style, often placing family members or trusted associates on the boards.
of companies that they invest in.
They emphasize substance over appearance and long term value creation over short term gains. I'm gonna read one more thing before we go back to the book.
Which has just blew my mind when I started reading about Marcus Wallenberg Junior before I read his biography.
MW's impact on Swedish industry.
Was so substantial.
That during the nineteen seventies
Wallenberg family businesses employed about forty percent
A single family.
Employed about forty percent of Sweden's industrial workforce and represented forty percent.
Of the total worth
of the stock market in Sweden.
Now, I wanted to read that to you because I think this idea, and again, I I took this idea from the book and just compressed it down to a maximum for you and I.
Don't let the money escape is one way they do this. So your preferred partner, right? You have this network of companies.
Who knows the count?
Even if they're separate legal structures.
They're
you know, heavily controlled by one family and people that they trust.
It's your preferred partner for every single thing should be should be inside the Wallenberg sphere. So they take control of Ericsson.
Okay.
They wind up going to the government of Finland.
And the family bank
S C B says hey.
We are going to loan you government of Finland.
four million dollars from our bank.
So you can then spend that money that came from our bank and give it to Ericsson.
So they can expand your network.
Your telecommunications network.
And then Ericsson, you're gonna have an agreement with SCB.
then we get at least thirty seven point five percent
of all of your banking business.
Don't let the money escape. Their associated companies almost always had to use the family bank.
Now without a doubt, since this is the biography of Marcus Wellenberg Junior of MW, right?
He's been the main character. The supporting character, the most other important character in this book.
is without a doubt his father. And his father's life motto.
Actually becomes
the family's motto and is still to this day. It's on their website over and over again. It's also in this book.
It translates from Latin. It is to be
Not to seem.
And one way he described it to his sons,'cause he's about to pass away, and then we're gonna get into really how his sons are now writing back
to each other, to to their friends and to their associates about the impact that their father had in their lives.
But the way he described it to his
Sons was it was the importance of being sincere and true to oneself.
So this part is absolutely incredible. I'm gonna read the whole thing. I'm gonna give you my outline, my notes before I read it to you. Number one, admiration for his father.
Number two, the importance of innovating and creating something new.
Number three, his idea that we need to be epoch makers.
Number four.
The traits that MW most admired from his father, and number five, the importance of again, this is repeated. They just have a handful of ideas that they repeat over and over again.
Like everybody else.
Surround yourself with great people. This is something the Wallenberg's repeat. So now MW
is writing right after the death of his father. He said, You probably know better than most people what a wonderful father, friend, comrade, and mentor he was.
And the strength of the ties.
with which we had developed with him.
He has left a great void.
But his spirit is so strong that it will live on forever among many of us.
What MW inherited from his father and turned to his own advantage was the ability to create something new.
F this is now how MW thought about this, for the sake of civilization.
I sincerely hope that the epoch of bold and constructive innovation has not come to an end with the passing away of my father. Innovation goes on constantly.
And it's stronger than any regulation.
The fact
That he was often seen as the soul of an epoch.
or regarded as an epoch maker.
was probably due to his unusual qualities.
Should other men of the same caliber emerge
I believe
They will also be seen.
as epoch makers.
MW continues to describe his father. He was extremely versatile. He had a phenomenal memory and was very knowledgeable in all kinds of sciences and literature.

about different technologies and he mastered languages as well.
There's all these exclamation points again.
I'm really surprised.
But he's very reserved suits how how often MW used exclamation points. I do the same, so I love it.
He was very interested in history and would tell stories about his various companies and about the difficulties he had encountered.
He was talented.
First of all, in terms of wisdom and intelligence.
But he also had great judgment, industriousness, energy,
And he also enjoyed good health.
And had a sense of responsibility. Really
The reason I'm reading this to you
Because
Describing his father.
But now that I know
the full arc of MW's life, you could use the same description of him as well.
He often used to say, I find it difficult not to intervene when I see things going wrong.
And one thing that I think is very important
is that he was very good at picking good
collaborators. And so with the passing of his father, this is not going to surprise you based on the personality and everything you and I have discussed up until this point. He's going to become MW is going to become the most prominent and powerful person inside the family, even though he is the second son.
That is why the book is called Furthering a Fortune. And the way he furthers the Wallenberg family fortune is because he had this obsession not with finance, but with industry. And I'm shocked.
And how much of the book.
Is covering
The restructuring
reviving and combining of all of the different companies that they quote unquote invest in. But really they're like I don't think of them as investors. They are very much
like operators, almost like co-founders in a lot of these cases. They're on the board. They they wield a a hell of a lot of
uh influence and control.
And so
MW's talking about the fact that, you know, they if you own something for a long period of time
It's given it's gonna have ups and downs.
And he talks about their approach
to fixing these ailing companies. So he says first the bank's management examines the company's position.
and they identify where the true losses lay.
then with the help of a very realistic approach, a judgment has to be made as to whether the company could be able to succeed if it was given a fresh start. So sometimes that is combining the company, sometimes that's shedding.
uh bus business units that were not performing as well. Sometimes it means writing it down and recapitalizing it.
But then he says then the company's bank
Right. This is what I mean about they don't let the money escape. The company's bank must often become involved on a long term basis.
And in the interaction interaction between the family bank and the company's management.
This is what MW says over and over again.
The personal element of
The relationships
was the greatest importance. He goes back on.
to why relationships are so important.
Let's say we have a an alien company.
We've
recapitalized it, we've combined, we got new management, we've done ever we can.
Now what happen, now what do we do next? To make it grow. The management of the bank, which you can think of as the family, right?
often committed itself to trying to secure markets meaning customers.
Further resurgent company.
Through judicious use of our contacts.
And so here's a description of some of the ways that MW
implements and exerts his influence. Again, they believe it
Wallenberg's believe and NW believe.
in long term and active investment.
When he became the managing director of the bank, he was able to mobilize all of its resources. He established a system of active ownership. What does that mean? This is what he did.
He hired a staff function for the gathering of information.
Economists and technicians were recruited, a legal department employing professional lawyers was set up.
And files on potential managers were kept and so on. So he's essentially helping them recruit as well.
When you go through this whole section
I was trying to summarize all the different things that he was doing here. I was like, Wait a minute.
This guy
Sets up a business.
Inside of a business, which is the bank.
That is in the business of managing businesses. That's really what he did.
That is not a short term and passive investor.
And then he goes about marshaling his leadership and his storytelling abilities because
Him and his brother have again they have this like dynamic tension over and over again. His brother is the administrator, he is the innovator.
And so there's a family motto that they would also have.
is to shift from the old
to that which is coming, which we saw. Remember go back to
the the case study on Atlas, right? You have this
This company founded by AL Wallenberg in eighteen seventies.
that they then manage and successfully shift from the old, which is the railways, all the way to diesel engines, all the way to d to being the leading company in, you know, uh pneumatic and and air compressor tools.
And so he's writing a letter to his brother.
And this is what he says. This is he's expressing his views on enterprise and development.
Uh so he says to sell a railway in order to buy into airlines
In other words, to shift from the old

Which has been the motto for the business activities of early generations of our family.
Is the only tradition
Worth caring for.
In which our ancestors were
would like to see us maintain.
MW was not shy. He was a very direct person. He was not shy.
about saying that he thought he was better suited to take care of the family's industrial traditions.
We are expanding not just from a bank. We have all kinds of businesses. These businesses are growing rapidly. This is in between
pre and post World War One and pre and post World War Two, you have these massive
economic explosions.
And MW is constantly criticizing. He says his brother is too passive.
And he's more of an administrator than an innovator.
There was without a doubt a difference in their temperaments.
MW was impatient.
Curious about technology?
and untiring in his following up on business matters.
Whereas Jacob
was often analytical.
too analytical in in in M in the MW's opinion.
Frequently delaying decisions and giving freer reign to executive managers. And the reason
I think this part is so important I wanted to bring out to you not just to talk about the differences personality between the two brothers.
Well what is very obvious, think about the description of a five year old MW that you and I talked about.
Now, you know, he's
Forty years old, forty five years old, where we're on the story.
He's doing MW's doing exactly what I feel Charlie Munger
Would.
Tell him to do, which is you need to follow your natural drift.
And you see his natural drift manifest through his personality, through his actions.
You also see when he plays golf, I love this story.
When NW played around a golf, he would aim straight for the green.
Even if the course were difficult and curving.
Jacob.
Preferred to hit two.
Safe
Strokes.
Now remember, MW's father is dead. Go back to the advice that he had his son.
Hey, you're young.
You're excited.
You met this, you know, sexy lady. You have all these feelings.
You know, you you gotta have a calm head.
His father's passed away.
MW gets a divorce and then he does
One of the
Two of the craziest things I've ever read about.
And one indication that his first wife
And him were not
Going to last very long.
Is because one of her favorite
One of his first wife's favorite expressions.

There's more to life than business.
Not for MW.
Now here's two crazy things.
First of all.
NW is going to marry or steal the wife
Of the king's nephew.
Okay, this goes back remember he was having a really hard time.
And having a hard time. It wasn't I guess it went trying.
He he would not he would refuse like compromise for like convention's sake. And his dad, you see his dad earlier trying to like
Counts the sun through letters and conversations.
Just like you know, y you're just certain things are expected of you, you're kind of acting like
you know, w more will for a little wild than than expected.
So
MW goes on a transatlantic cruise. There's a bunch of people leaving from uh from Sweden. They're going they're all going to a wedding in America.
And on this cruise
When his wife is pregnant with their third child, by the way, who she stays back in Sweden.
He meets this woman.
This is gonna wind up being his new wife. His wife is gonna be Marianne Bernadotte, who knows if I'm pronounced that correctly.
At the time Mary Ann is married.
To count Coral.
Bruno Dotti.
Count Coral.
Is the sun.
Of Prince Oscar.
who is the brother of King
Gustaf the fifth.
So despite the fact that they're both married.
Right.
They went up falling in love and it says they prepared to dissolve their marriagely in order to unite.
And keep in mind divorce says divorce was still unusual among mem members of the establishment.
If divorce was frowned upon by the Wallenberg family, which it definitely was, it was a positive scandal.
For the Bernadotti family, a member of the royal family had been abandoned by his wife.
And it gets even more awkward.
MW used to play tennis
With the king.
And now you have just stolen
The wife
Of the king's
Nephew!
Needless to say, I got a good chuckle out of this next sentence. It took some time before MW and his new wife
We're invited to the royal palace for dinner.
That is the first wild thing that he does in his personal life. Here is the second. It is very highly likely
That MW
Winds up setting up the next marriage for his first wife because
MW's first wife
Marries a close associate of the Wallenberg family.
His ex-wife marries this guy named Charles Hambro. Charles Hambro is a member of a well known family of bankers.
The Wallenberg bank owned shares in the Hambros bank.
And MW and Charles knew each other.
MW's children would later say jokingly or not.
That their father had probably arranged.
His wife's second marriage.
And I think the thing that ties all this together is really just like MW gets
what MW wants. And so he winds up wrestling control.
Of the family bank from his brother.
and every single thing that he wants to control, whether it's the family's industrial
a holding company, the bank
Anytime he wants to control something, he winds up getting control of it. So from here on in for the rest of his life, he's gonna push the pace.
Up until his eighties. He works until he he dies, and in fact
He's like training all the young people around him and they just cannot believe the amount of energy
That this guy has.
So I want to go over the very unique way.
Ga'cause granted he d really has no regard
for convention.
are just continuing uh down a path just because somebody else in his family beforehand
Continue down that path.
In everything he does, he injects some kind of new idea. So
Takes over.
uh the the management of the family bank.
And he institutes this thing called they he calls morning prayers.
So he gathers his top people and each of them would give an account of their respective areas of responsibility, report major individual transactions, and exchange general information in this way.
MW could keep abreast of developments within the bank.
and be at the center of the flow of information. So it's kind of like an analogue.
low tech way if you listen to the Jensen Wong.
Episode I did last week.
Where
Mm.
MW
And Jensen and a lot of history such prayers, they want
unimpeded information and a lot of it.
And so Jensen has this idea where he's like, Hey, every single person in the company, you're gonna write, I think, once a week.
This top five things, this T five T email, right? Top five things.
You're gonna put in bullet points. I'm gonna, you know, read hundreds of them.
uh every week and I'm gonna have this unimpeded flow of information.
MW's analog version of that is I'm gonna gather all my people together and every real quick the in many cases they they mention the fact that these meetings go really fast.
Uh like fifteen minutes.
uh and I'm gonna get this unimpeded information on a daily basis from the people in my company.
Another thing that was very unusual could
Kiven
uh the industry that they're in.
And how reserved uh the family was.
MW is the first person he actually starts advertising the bank's services publicly because he wants to grow.
And so it says in the early n in the early nineteen fifties, the bank, which normally took a low pro profile with the media
advertise that it was at the service of private enterprise.
He starts making the bank invest heavily.
in technology and so in the technology of their day, they have these punch car machines.
So he buys a bunch of punch card machines and then all he makes sure that all accounting transactions inside of the bank
have to be no longer done by hand. They have to be done
on the the the technology of their day, which is the punch card machines, right?
So this result, all accounting transactions were transferred to punch cards.
Which led to a dramatic increase in efficiency productivity doubled.
twice as many transactions were carried out by a workforce workforce
That only had to increase from four hundred and twenty five employees to five hundred and fifty. So they add
you know, a hundred and twenty five employees, but they do double amount of work because of
uh MW's insistence.
that you need to invest in technology because we want to push these massive increases in productivity.
The technology enables.
And so remember, he wrestled control of the family bank from his older brother, and we're gonna get a lot more details on how he decided to run his business.
There's a obviously a lot of differences between his brother Jacob and him, but there's also gonna be a lot of parallels. When I got to this section, I thought a lot about Steve Jobs.
uh in Jensen Wong. So it says MW is a highly visible
driving force in the bank.
Jacob.
Had adopted
A low profile. The employees did not see much of him. MW had a different way of communicating.
with the staff. He got to know everybody. So I would say he's
MW's a big proponent of m management by walking around.
He locked he liked to walk around the office asking what the different employees were doing.
The pace of the work in the bank increased.
MW would express his dissatisfaction with somebody in front of other people. So remember.
Just like Jensen was a big proponent of public criticism.
Talk the fact that
you should criticize publicly because it's should be a learning experience for the entire
company. If you criticize criticize privately, only you and that individual employee actually learn the lesson.
And Jensen was optimizing just like MW is optimizing.
for the overall learning of the entire company.
uh MW would become irritated and lose his temper.
But there was a often a sound intention behind his outbursts. He considered it useful for others to understand
What it meant
to work for him. That reminds me of Jensen as well.
Not keeping him informed of what was going on was a mortal sin. That reminded me of Jensen as well.
It was not up to the subordinate to judge what needed to be reported. Jensen almost says that exact same thing. It's spooky how similar this is.
MW himself wanted information even on apparently trivial matters.
He wanted to draw the conclusions himself.
Reports containing the writer's own reflections he would call
Half
Chewed.
Food. Now
I had a weird thought that came to mind when I got to this section.
Because
This is this reminding me of Steve Jobs would insist on improving every single ad.
That Apple did before it went out.
And so the people that made the ads
in in the meetings with jobs, they would like put the ad in front of them and they'd try to tell a story and and
Jobs would tell him to shut up.
It's like are you gonna be there?
You know, when I see this billboard or when I'm read having coffee
on a Sunday morning and and seeing this Apple ad in a newspaper.
And they're like, No.
Exactly.
So be quiet. I wanna be able to judge
Like draw the conclusions myself.
Uh, another side of MW's leadership style was that once he had told someone off
He would quickly matter pass. It did not linger.
Now one striking way that MW deviated from both Steve Jobs and Jensen, you know, Steve focused on running Apple the whole time.
Jensen focus on running.
NVIDIA.
The whole time.
MW was the chairman of the board.
For thirty three.
Separate companies.
and on the board of another eighty companies.
His style, I would say, is much more in line with what Sam Zell said, where he set up his all of his companies and everything he was in. Sam said, I am the chairman of everything.
and the CEO of nothing.
There's a couple other things and I just made a list because, you know.
They reappear over and over again. And so I just made a list of how I think about MW's entrepreneurial philosophy.
Okay. Number one, he wants to invest in technology. Number two, he wants decisive influence over the company he is working on or investing in.
Number three, he is going to impatiently
Push things forward.
Constantly.
Which leads to number four, which seems paradoxical. And the paradox is
MW's
Short term impatience.
Combined
Вит лонгтернс.
Of the Wallenberg family in their industrial matters. The list continues. Number five, the quality of the people is most important. In fact, let me interrupt the list. I'm going to read the section two and I'll get back to my list.
When judging companies, MW considered that the capacity of its top people was generally the most important ingredient.
He therefore chose executive managers with great care.
He kept himself well informed about new names.
drove his managers extremely hard and moved others
Aside if they were not up to the task.
Those of his own generation who had allied themselves closely with him earlier.
We're gradually moved to one side.
In favor of new blood.
He demanded unlimited work and loyalty.
from his managing directors.
in all of his industrial company. So number five
The quality of the people is most important.
Number six, he believed in driving people hard.
Number seven, he wanted new blood.
And number eight.
He had tons of expansive energy.
For new initiatives.
And number nine is one of his favorite sayings that he would repeat. He said, Ownership without presence rots. Ownership
Without presence rots. What does he mean? Go in person.
Be seen, be prepared. Let me just give you a quick example of this.
It's also important him.
to study industrial operations at firsthand, to forge contacts with onsite personnel and to be visible.
He liked to prepare himself well before his visits and liked to surprise people with unexpected questions, often quite detailed ones.
the managing director uh on the site
Could never feel absolutely safe.
Which of course
was MW's intention.
Here's what a meeting with MW was like from the perspective of one of his company's directors. This is gonna remind you again.
Sam Zell.
J Pritzer.
Bernard and all they have all been described in a similar way that
MW is going to be described from one of his directors. Monthly reports, sales statistics, and minutes from meetings were reviewed. MW had a unique talent.
for putting his finger on the exact figure or point
Which you had not analyzed sufficiently.
are about which you did not know all the answers, the outstanding ability he possessed to analyze a report quickly.
Was certainly acquired.
through a lifelong experience of scrutinizing statistical information and annual reports.
He had a unique ability.
Of quickly his finger on the weak point.
And of asking
difficult questions. Again, Sam Zell.
Jay Pritzker, Bernard and All have all been described in that exact same way. Now, this is not to say
That a a lot as you can imagine, this kind of domineering personality. It's very difficult personality.
There's gonna be a lot of people that love him, and there's gonna be loyal to him and a lot of people that don't. In fact one of his
main directors and one of the holding companies actually described
MW.
As both a great man
And a small one.
This part
I thought was a great description. So I'm gonna just read the entire thing to you and I think it really gives us a sense
of you know who MW was.
His greatness was incontestable and worthy of all of our admiration.
It was based on a deep sense of responsibility for Sweden as a country.
And in particular for the Swedish economy.
He spent all of his expertise.
Energies and time.
on the task of developing and in many cases rescuing
companies.
This was his life.
Everything.
And everybody was subordinated
to his mission in life.
What do I mean then?
By saying
That he was a small man.
In certain respects.
I certainly do not exaggerate when I say that he was notorious
for striking terror into the hearts of many of his direct and indirect subordinates.
He could be merciless.
Even relatively trivial issues.
could cause dreadful outburst of anger.
It is mainly
This merciless side of him.
That I have in mind
When I speak about being a little man.
A thoroughly great and just person.
Does not treat his fellow human beings
Like that.
And I wanna pause there before I go into the greatest tragedy of MW's life.
'Cause I read that part and I I really thought about this because I I told you before I have very negative inner monologue.
And I
one the reason one of the reasons I I work by myself is
I don't wanna express like I don't wanna talk to other people the way I talk to myself, okay?
And
If you were a the reason I thought about this is because like
Uh if you would ask Charlie Munger, and I did, I got to talk to Charlie Munger about this before he died.
like who he thought the greatest entrepreneur of all time was, and he would say Rockefeller.
And one of the most fascinating things about Rockfall is like obviously the people you and I study together, you know, a lot of them are, you know.
ruthless and
There's a bunch of examples of them being r incredibly harsh and mean and uh to people around them.
Well then on the th that's on one end of the spectrum.
But it I I would I you know, I've said before it's that's not a prerequisite to success. You have literally the guy that Munger says is the best ever do it.
And people worked for him for decades. They said they ne not only
They never heard him.
Raise his voice.
They never heard him say an unkind word. Now
Of course I'm not
Naive like Rockefeller's
Competitors would not describe him.
You know, as a as a nice person with etiquette and manners.
Um, but as I get older
And I'm exposed to other people that are, you know, wildly successful and and also not assholes.
Uh I think etiquette.
And
Manners.
uh they they they become more important and admirable
To me and maybe because I see that's a like a
area in my own life where I have like vast room for improvement. And so it's almost like
Aspirational.
But I don't
Yeah.
I don't wanna get to the end of my life and and be described by people like that that say like
He was a small person.
A little man.
Um
you know, I wanna rip through these ideas in a in a fast manner. I wanna be respectful of your time, but I do think pausing there
uh is really important. Like just what c how do we want to be described after we're gone.
And then I'm not gonna say it's the cause for for for what happens next, which is by far the greatest tragedy in MW's life.
But it is interesting that it follows
In the book like this. So
Mark Junior, which is
MW's grown son. This is towards the end of MW's life. He's probably seventy years old when this this occurs.
Mark Junior's obviously being
Yeah.
He's running parts of the company uh the family business. He's being trained.
He is
MW's successor.
And he makes a mistake.
And it says Mark Junior had been given a
Interview.
And he was asked like why did the Wallenberg start building this new pulp factory?
in Germany without yet having received permission from the authorities.
And he had answered honestly.
But improvently.
That it was preferable to be prosecuted for breaking environmental laws than to paying large damages for breach of contract to a German buyer of pulp.
And so th his reply aroused a great deal of attention.
And was reported throughout the press.
He could expect to receive some sharp comments from MW.
Sure enough, at the board meeting in the that afternoon, he was severely reprimanded by his father.
His father then closes.
The meeting.
MW then leaves to fly to London.
The next morning wakes up, gets an alarming report that Mark Jr. had not appeared.
at his schedule Friday morning meetings.
Nor did he spend the night
At his house.
So MW flies back to Sweden.
When he gets back in Stockholm he is met by somebody
That works with them.
And tells and that person tells MW the dreadful news.
That his son.
Killed himself.
MW's son.
Went into the forest.
That afternoon.
And shot himself.
And the book describes the days after this happens. I don't I don't have words for this.
says MW did not outwardly reveal any sorrow.
Or possible remorse.
He told one family member, remember
Then in a crisis
We Wallenburg's are ice cold.
There's another interview in the book given and it says I remember I was standing talking with N W at Mark Junior's funeral.
MW looked at his watch and said
At three PM there's a board meeting at the bank.
Only now do I understand the importance of these words.
You have to force yourself.
To carry on and to return to normal life again.
And then one of the saddest lines in the book is about Mark's
Sun Husky.
Who is MW's
Grandson and it says MW took care of Husky.
The ties between them reflected the fact that
That it was a father who had lost his son.
And a son.
Who had lost his father.
And so for the remaining ten to twelve years of MW's life, he's spending the time.
trying to train the generation and the next generation after him.
for this perpetuation of this family dynasty. And I think this is a fitting way.
to close on MW's life. He passes away when he's eighty two.
Says a straightforward and simple theme ram throughout MW's life.
He had accepted responsibility early on for taking over the family's heritage.
And traditions from his parents.
With almost religious fervor.
His father preached to him about the importance of fulfilling this duty.
In spite of crises.
Conflicts and shifting political winds.
MW carried out his task.
with remarkable consistency and strength.
MW's whole life.
Was colored.
by this overwhelming task.
Anything else?
Would have been a betrayal.
of his destiny.
And that is where I'll leave it for the full story, highly recommend buying the book.
If you buy the book using the link in the show notes below.
Fail on your podcast player and at founderspodcast.com.
You'll be supporting the podcast at the same time. Last time I checked there's only one or two
uh copies available. But if you can get a copy of it.
Highly recommend you buy the book.
That is three hundred and seventy seven books down.
One thousand ago.
And I'll talk to you again soon.