‘I have been asked me to give a short character sketch of Barbro, with whom I collaborated and also socialized over a number of years beginning in 1968.

She was born in 1922 and graduated from the School of Economics in 1946 as one of still very few women, and then began working at Dahlgren’s Accounting Firm. Before she had even accumulated the 5 years of service required for becoming chartered, she broke with the firm along with Börje Lindeberg and established Lindeberg’s Accounting Firm. She remained faithful to that firm for the rest of her career, for 20 years as a partner with Börje and afterwards in a successively greater context.

Barbro was a complex person. In everything I can remember, she thought and acted spontaneously, energetically, and “outside the box,” at the same time as she came from an upper-class environment in the country and selected what was in conventional terms the most formal of careers—that of Chartered Accountant.

In her private life, too, she chose unusual paths. At 32 years old, she married physician Eskil Kylin, who was 33 years her senior and possessed a rather stormy professional history. One might begin to sense here an inherent protest against convention. I would like to say that her personality fit perfectly with the spirit of the time she lived in. The duties of accountant had not yet been formalized to the quite extreme level of control the profession has today, but was to a large degree the role of economic and business consultant for the client.

The later part of her career in particular saw the development of a tax system that had, and now has, a great impact on companies and business owners in an increasingly confiscatory direction. This development led, as it always does, to countermeasures in the form of sophisticated tax arrangements and a shift toward an increased element of speculation in the economy. Both of these trends fit Barbro’s personality.

She was intelligent, quickly perceptive, and impulsive. These qualities made her well-suited to understanding new trends, solutions, and business arrangements, particularly in the tax and financial system and then successfully applying them to the firm’s various clients. Over the years, she also built up a large professional network that ranged from the upper echelon of corporate executives to a large number of small business owners.

I remember one instance when we had arranged an international conference for members of the firm’s international collaboration chain. With just two telephone conversations lasting a couple of minutes each, Barbro had arranged to have Hans Werthén (cousin and CEO of Electrolux) and Jacob Palmstierna (Executive Vice President of SEB) give presentations. Another section of her network consisted of a large number of both more and less well-known actors, musicians, and restaurateurs. Maybe this says something about which mental and cultural environments she felt most at home in.

She enjoyed bringing together different people from her network and fostering these new relationships. Perhaps the firm’s largest client was a group comprised of number of businesses and organizations related to the Swedish Medical Association. In around 1960, members of this group formed the private health care company later called Praktikertjänst. The brains behind this endeavor was Hans Magnus Fajerson, who was then Chief Counsel of the Swedish Medical Association. The whole venture began as a tax avoidance project in which a number of business and tax schemes could be made more effective if they were carried out within the framework of a larger judicial entity. Within this system, considerable volumes of liquidity were gradually formed, and these needed placement. It was because of this that Barbro came upon the idea to bring together Hans Magnus and a young Robert Weil. The collaboration between these two extremely creative personalities was seen by both, I believe, as very fulfilling—not only intellectually, but also professionally. Even though it all began with the accountant, things could also become a bit adventurous. But this discussion lies on the periphery of Barbro’s role in all of it. She was happy to hand such problems over to the rest of us to handle.

When she passed away at age 76, her last years had been obscured by illness. Maybe it was merciful that the business climate that was her lifeblood had begun to transform into the strictly efficient, heavily media-monitored system we know today.’

Jan Engström

Colleague and Partner, Lindeberg’s Accounting Firm AB