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Ikea family feud erupts over flat-pack fortune

The founder of Swedish furniture giant Ikea and his three sons have become involved in a bitter dispute about the family's wealth, according to a new book about the company's future.

Published: 19 September 2013 09:12 CEST

Ikea family feud erupts over flat-pack fortune

The book, ‘Ikea Moving to the Future’ (Ikea på väg mot framtiden), claims that Ikea founder Ingvar Kamprad and his sons are at loggerheads over a large portion of the family’s fortune, reported the Dagens Industri (DI) newspaper.

The three sons hired a star lawyer from the US to take on their 87-year-old father, who has a fortune of $3.2 billion, Forbes estimated in March.

The new book, which is has yet to be published, was penned by Lennart Dahlgren, the former head of Ikea in Russia, and researchers Stellan Björk and Karl von Schulzenheim.

The authors claim that the financial dispute can be traced back to 1982, when Kamprad registered Ikea in the Netherlands with the Dutch Stiching Ingka Foundation, but he kept the immaterial rights to the brand, which provided him a turnover-based compensation.

Kamprad’s move only afforded him a tiny fraction of the proceeds from the company, but over the next 30 years, the sum increased to 20-30 billion kronor ($3.14 billion to $4.71 billion), the authors reckoned.

Legally, the funds belonged to the sons according to the book, something that led to a long fight within the family, which ended up with Kamprad senior falling ill.

No members of the family have commented as yet.

TT/The Local/og

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A file photo at Ikea in Aalborg, where 31 people stayed overnight during a snowstorm on December 1st 2021.

A file photo at Ikea in Aalborg, where 31 people stayed overnight during a snowstorm on December 1st 2021. Photo: Henning Bagger/Ritzau Scanpix

Anyone who has found themselves wandering the mazy aisles of an Ikea might be able to empathise with the sense of being lost in the furniture store for a seemingly indefinite time.

Such a feeling was probably more real than usual for six customers and 25 staff members who were forced to spend the night at the furniture giant’s Aalborg branch after being snowed in.

Heavy snow in North Jutland brought traffic to a standstill and halted public transport in parts of the region on Wednesday afternoon, resulting in a snow-in at Ikea.

“This is certainly a new situation for us,” Ikea Aalborg store manager Peter Elmose told local media Nordjyske, which first reported the story.

“It’s certainly not how I thought my day would end when I drove to work this morning,” Elmose added.

The 31 people gathered in the store’s restaurant area and planned to see Christmas television and football to pass the evening, the store’s manager reported to Nordjyske.

“Our kitchen staff have made sure there is hot chocolate, risalamande, pastries, soft drinks, coffee and the odd beer for us in light of the occasion. So we’ll be able to keep warm,” he said.

“We couldn’t just send them outside and lock the door behind them at our 8pm closing time. Absolutely not. So of course they’ll be staying here,” he added.

The temporary guests were given lodging in different departments of the store in view of the Covid-19 situation, Nordjyske writes.

“For us , the most important thing was to take care of each other and that everyone feels safe,” Elmose said.

At least Ikea’s stranded customers and staff had somewhere comfortable to lay their heads.

The same can unlikely be said for around 300 passengers at the city’s airport who had to stay overnight at the terminal.

The airport was forced to stop flights from 2:30pm yesterday amid worsening weather, which also prevented buses from transferring passengers to hotels.

“We have around 300 people in the terminal right now and have been giving out blankets on the assumption they will be staying here tonight,” Aalborg Airport operations manager Kim Bermann told Nordjyske.

READ ALSO: Ikea reopens in Denmark after country’s worst retail month this century

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