Reclusive, mischievous and domineering, Jan Stenbeck enjoyed
his position on the edge of the establishment in his native Sweden, preferring
to direct his businesses from the US and Luxembourg when he died suddenly
at the age of 59. The complexity of the group he created, with its cross-ownerships,
internal loans and foreign foundations, also created distrust among investors
and a fear that only Mr Stenbeck, impulsive, litigious and with a sometimes
bullying business style, knew the entire financial picture. Mr Stenbeck
inherited wealth. Born in Stockholm in 1942, he was brought up in Ostermalm,
the most exclusive inner district of the Swedish capital. his father, the
prominent lawyer Hugo Stenbeck, and the Klingspor and von Horn families
had built into one of Sweden’s largest industrial investment companies,
Kinnevik, which controlled the forest products company Korsnäs and
had interests in steel and hydro-electric power. Jan was the youngest of
four children. After studying law for two years in Uppsala University, he
moved to the US. He returned to Sweden to complete his degree in 1968 and
then took an MBA at Harvard Business School. In 1970, he joined Morgan Stanley's
corporate finance division and became a vice-president. He might have stayed
there if it had not been for the death in 1976 of his eldest brother Hugo
junior, Kinnevik's chief executive, and that of his father nine months later.
In the beginning, his control of Kinnevik was far from secure and he became
embroiled in a bitter family feud with his sisters, one of whom, Margaretha
af Ugglas, went on to become Sweden's foreign minister. Eventually, he outmanoeuvred
them through a reverse takeover of Kinnevik in 1983. By this stage, he had
already started transforming the group, attacking the Swedish telephone
monopoly by establishing the world's first cellular system in commercial
use in 1981. With typical cheek, he got round the law banning private operators
from using automatic switchboards by employing a woman simply to press a
red button to connect calls. Later, his Tele2 would become the major competitor
to Telia, the incumbent operator, in both fixed and mobile telephony. Realising
he lacked capital to compete in most developed countries, Stenbeck instead
established mobile operators in emerging markets across Asia, Africa and
Latin America. he was an early investor in Vodaphone. Holdings in the UK
and Hong Kong were sold to finance the expansion. Stenbeck's other interests
were in the media. Here, he used technology to break Sweden's public service
monopoly by beaming in programmes from studios in London. By the time commercial
TV became legal, he was already established and his group now owns Europe's
third-largest pay-TV operator. Different newspapers and magazines came and
went while the rapid turnover of staff and Mr Stenbeck's willingness to
humiliate senior employees created enemies. One director of a television
channel learnt of his dismissal in a broadcast debate. In his book on Stenbeck,
author Per Andersson uses Kinnevik as a metaphor for the painful transformation
of Sweden from a nation of forestry and steel to mobile phones and call
centres. But Stenbeck, just like Sweden, never really abandoned the forests,
and while the chill presently weighs heavy on the telecom and media sectors,
the paper mills continue to support Kinnevik and Swedes alike
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