here's something i stumbled across in the process of doing a little research...i for one will neevr shop with these fuckers again- not that i'd ever consider buying their cheap-ass ugly furniture, but i'd usually drop a few hundred there at christmas every year, buying frames, lights, kitchen stuff, candles, and other 'chotchskes'(?).
it seems that in 1982, Ingvar Kamprad, the founder/owner of IKEA 'donated' his ownership to the Dutch Stichting INGKA Foundation, the LARGEST 'charitable' foundation in the world, even bigger than the Gates(as in Bill & Melinda)Foundation.
and who is the chairman of the the INGKA Foundation? Ingvar Kamrad, of course...
http://sookyan.blogspot.com/2006_06_01_sookyan_archive.htmlIKEA
Flat-pack accounting
May 11th 2006
From The Economist print edition
Forget about the Gates Foundation. The world's biggest charity owns IKEA—and is
devoted to interior design FEW tasks are more exasperating than trying to assemble flat-pack furniture from IKEA. But even that is simple compared with piecing together the accounts of the world's largest homefurnishing retailer. Much has been written about IKEA's remarkably effective retail formula. The Economist has investigated the group's no less astonishing finances.
What emerges is an outfit that ingeniously exploits the quirks of different jurisdictions to create
a charity, dedicated to a somewhat banal cause, that is not only the world's richest foundation,
but is at the moment also one of its least generous. The overall set-up of IKEA minimises tax
and disclosure, handsomely rewards the founding Kamprad family and makes IKEA immune to
a takeover. And if that seems too good to be true, it is: these arrangements are extremely
hard to undo. The benefits from all this ingenuity come at the price of a huge constraint on the
successors to Ingvar Kamprad, the store's founder (pictured above), to do with IKEA as they
see fit...
If Stichting Ingka Foundation has net worth of at least $36 billion it would be the world's
wealthiest charity. Its value easily exceeds the $26.9 billion shown in the latest published
accounts of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which is commonly awarded that accolade.
Measured by good works, however, the Gates Foundation wins hands down. It devotes most of
its resources to curing the diseases of the world's poor. By contrast the Kamprad billions are
dedicated to “innovation in the field of architectural and interior design”. The articles of
association of Stichting Ingka Foundation, a public record in the Netherlands, state that this
object cannot be amended. Even a Dutch court can make only minor changes to the stichting's
aims.
The Kamprad foundations compare poorly with the Gates Foundation
in other ways, too. The American charity operates transparently,
publishing, for instance, details of every grant it makes. But Dutch
foundations are very loosely regulated and are subject to little or no
third-party oversight. They are not, for instance, legally obliged to
publish their accounts.
Under its articles, Stichting Ingka Foundation channels its funds to
Stichting IKEA Foundation, another Dutch-registered foundation with
identical aims, and which actually doles out money for worthy interior-design ideas. But the
second foundation does not publish any information either. So just how—or whether—Stichting
Ingka Foundation has spent the €1.6 billion that it collected in dividends from Ingka Holding in
1998-2003 remains hidden from view...Pass the word- IKEA sucks ass. and NOT just because they make lousy furniture.