Knudstorp’s finding was shocking. His analysis revealed that with the exception of 1998, the LEGO Group had steadily produced accounting profits from 1993 to 2002, yet the company had lost some $1.6 billion of economic value over the same period. In other words, the company’s owners would have been better off investing in no-risk, low-return government bonds than in LEGO. By backing LEGO, they had depleted their family fortune at the rate of almost half a million dollars per day, every day, for ten years.