Half of IKEA founder’s private fortune will support economic development in northern Sweden
Ingvar Kamprand loved traveling in the Torne Valley on the Sweden-Finland border and has left half his personal fortune to support economic development in the region.
Some of the personal wealth of Ingvar Kamprand, who founded Swedish retail giant IKEA, will support economic development in northern Sweden.
Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter on Wednesday posted a photo of Kamprand’s handwritten will where he says half of the fortune will go to his children, while the other half goes to the family’s foundation aimed at supporting economic developments in the northernmost region of the country.
The newspaper estimates the IKEA founder’s private fortune to be about 750 million Swedish kroner (€74.3 million).
Regional newspaper Norrländska Socialdemokraten (NSD) tells the story of Ingvar Kamprand’s passion for traveling the Torne Valley in the years after establishing the company’s northernmost mall in Haparanda on the Swedish-Finnish border.
The IKEA mall in Haparanda serves customers throughout the Barents Region, including northern Norway, Russia’s Kola Peninsula and Republic of Karelia, as well as Finnish Lapland.
How the money will be spent in Norrbotten is not year clear. Decisions will be taken by the family’s foundation. Kamprand’s will simply reads “These funds will be used for the development of business activities in Norrland.”
The will only contains a smaller part of the IKEA founder’s total generated income from the furniture malls. At the time of his death this winter, Kamprand’s foundations worldwide value had could be worth as much as 620 billion Swedish kroner (€61.4 billion), the business weekly Veckans Affärer reports.
