2024-07-04 11:04:57
Some are richer than others
According to the BBC, on the island of Lidingė there are huge red and yellow wooden villas, white minimalist mansions with floor-to-ceiling windows.
Here’s how entrepreneur Konrad Bergström flips the light switch in his wine cellar and sees 3,000 bottles of alcohol. “French Bordeaux, that’s what I like,” he says, flashing a bright white smile. Elsewhere, there’s an outdoor pool, a reindeer-skinned gym and the Workshop, a nightclub with a large metal urinal.
He’s made money with other entrepreneurs, including a headphone and speaker company, and the house is one of four properties he owns in Sweden and Spain.
The lifestyle of a successful businessman is not surprising, but world observers may be surprised by how many people have become as rich as K. Bergström, and maybe even richer.
Sweden is a country with a worldwide reputation for left-wing politics. Although a right-wing coalition is currently in power, according to the BBC, for most of the last century the country has been led by social democratic governments elected on promises to grow the economy fairly and tax-finance a strong welfare state.
Sweden has seen a boom in the super-rich over the past three decades. According to the rich list published by the Swedish business magazine Veckans Affärer, in 1996 There were only 28 people in Sweden with a net worth of one billion kroner or more (about $91 million). Most of them come from families that have been rich for generations.
Until 2021 there were 542 “krona billionaires”, according to a similar analysis by daily Aftonbladet.
in 2021 they controlled assets equal to 70 percent. for the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) – an indicator of the total value of goods and services in the economy.
Just 10 million populous Sweden has one of the world’s largest “dollar billionaires” per capita.
in 2024 There are 43 Swedes on the Forbes Rich List with a fortune of 1 billion. dollars or more. That’s about four billionaires per million people, compared to about two billionaires per million in the U.S., which has 813 billionaires, the most of any country, but has more than 342 million people. people.
How did so many rich people come to be?
“It happened imperceptibly, meaning you didn’t notice it until it happened,” says Aftonbladet journalist Andreas Cervenka, author of the book Greedy Sweden, in which he examines the steady rise of Sweden’s ultra-rich.
“But in Stockholm you can see the wealth with your own eyes and the contrast between the extremely rich people in some parts of Stockholm and the relatively poor people in others,” he assured.
One of the reasons for the rise of the new ultra-rich is Sweden’s thriving tech scene. The country has a reputation as Europe’s Silicon Valley, having hosted more than 40 so-called unicorn startups in the past two decades.
It’s home to Skype and Spotify, gaming companies King and Mojang, and fintech startup Tink, which Visa bought for around $2 billion during the pandemic. dollars, healthcare company “Kry” and e. scooter company Voi.
Epicentre – Veteran entrepreneur Ola Ahlvarsson has been counting this success since the 1990s. He says that the tax break for home computers in Sweden “has brought us all together, or brought us all together much faster than other countries”.
As a co-founder himself, he also notes the strong “collaborative culture” in the startup scene, where experienced entrepreneurs often become role models and investors in the next generation of tech companies.
Sweden is also a popular test market due to its size. “If you want to test whether it works in a larger market, this is where you can try things at a small cost and without too much risk to your brand or share price,” says the entrepreneur.
However, attention is also drawn to monetary policy, which, according to him, helped turn the country into a paradise for the super-rich.
Interest rates were very low in Sweden from the early 2010s until a couple of years ago, so Swedes with spare cash often chose to invest in real estate or risky investments.
Although in Sweden more than 50% applies to the highest earners. personal income tax is one of the highest rates in Europe.
The country abolished estate and inheritance taxes in the 2000s, and earnings from stocks and payments to corporate shareholders are taxed much lower than wages. The corporate tax rate has also been reduced from around 30 percent. in the 1990s to about 20 percent.
This is a very favorable environment
“If you’re a billionaire today, you don’t have to move out of Sweden.” And in fact, some billionaires move here,” says A. Cervenka.
Back on the island of Lidinge, businessman K. Bergström agrees that Sweden has a “very favorable tax system if you start companies”.
But he tells the BBC that his wealth has a positive impact, as his businesses and homes provide jobs for others. “We have a babysitter, a gardener and cleaners… and that also creates more jobs. So we should not forget how we build society”, he gave an example.
Swedish entrepreneurs and venture capitalists are also increasingly reinvesting their money in so-called “impact” start-ups.
in 2023 74 percent all venture capital funding for Swedish start-ups has had an impact on companies. This is the highest percentage in the European Union and well above the European average of 35 percent, according to data from Dealroom.
Perhaps the most famous impact investor in the country is Niklas Adalberth, who is one of the founders of the payment platform Klarna. in 2017 he used 130 million dollars of his fortune to establish the Norrsken Foundation, an organization that supports and invests in impact companies.
“I don’t have the habits of a billionaire to have a yacht, a private jet or anything like that,” N. Adalberth tells the BBC, adding that this is his recipe for happiness.
But others say there is a lack of nuanced public debate in Sweden about the wealth of billionaires, not just a good-bad dichotomy about how businessmen spend their wealth. The media image of Sweden’s billionaires is mostly positive, and their wealth is rarely explained in light of the country’s changing economic policies, a recent study from Örebro University has found.
“As long as the super-rich are seen as embodying the ideals of the neoliberal era, such as hard work, risk-taking and entrepreneurship, the underlying inequality is not questioned,” says media researcher Axel Vikström.
A. Cervenka adds that the debate on taxing the super-rich is not as intense in Sweden as it is in many other Western countries, such as the United States.
“It’s a kind of paradox. One would think that given our past, when we are perceived as a socialist country, this should be the most important thing,” says the author, adding that there is a “winner-takes-all” mentality.
“If you play your cards right, you can also become a billionaire… And this, I think, is quite a significant change in the Swedish mentality,” he assured.
Prepared according to information from the BBC.
2024-07-04 11:04:57