Eli M. Black
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Eli M. Black (April 9, 1921–February 3, 1975) was a Jewish-American businessman who controlled the United Brands Company.
Born Elihu Menashe Blachowitz in Poland, he came to America as a child. He was trained as a rabbi, and served a congregation in Woodmere, New York, but left the pulpit after three-and-a -half years to enter business. He became a successful investment banker, and in 1954 he was named president of the American Seal-Kap Company.
American Seal-Kap made the plastic liners in bottle caps, but Black turned it into a vehicle for acquisitions. He renamed the company AMK after its ticker symbol and jumped on the conglomerate bandwagon of the 1960s. Among his acquisitions was the John Morrell meatpacking company. In 1969 he took over United Fruit Company and renamed his company United Brands.
United Fruit had far less cash than Black had believed when he acquired it. Black was not a good manager, and United Brands soon became crippled with debt. The company's losses were exacerbated by Hurricane Fifi in 1974, which destroyed many of its banana plantations in Honduras.
In 1975, the Securities and Exchange Commission uncovered a $2.5 million bribe that the company had agreed to pay Honduran president Oswaldo López Arellano in return for reducing taxes on banana exports. A few weeks before the scandal broke, Black went to his office on the forty-fourth floor of the Pan Am Building in Manhattan, bashed out the window with his briefcase, and jumped to his death on Park Avenue.
After Black's spectacular suicide, Cincinnati-based American Financial, one of millionaire Carl Lindner, Jr.'s companies, bought into United Fruit.
Black's suicide was the inspiration for a scene in the 1994 screwball comedy film The Hudsucker Proxy.[1]
[edit] References
- ^ Stephen Dalton, Film Choice, The Times, June 21, 2007.
- "Eli Black's Rites Attended by 500", The New York Times, February 6, 1975.
- Peter Kihss, "44 Story Plunge Kills Head of United Brands", The New York Times, February 4, 1975.
- Peter T. Kilborn, "Suicide of Big Executive: Stress of Corporate Life", The New York Times, February 14, 1975.
- Thomas P. McCann, On the Inside, Beverley, Massachusetts: Quinlan Press, 1987.
