Sam Zell
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| Samuel Zell | |
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| Born | September, 1941 Chicago, Illinois |
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| Occupation | Chairman and Chief Executive of Tribune Company and Equity Group Investments |
| Net worth | US$6.0 billion (2006)[1] |
Samuel "Sam" Zell (born September 1941) is a U.S.-born billionaire and real estate entrepreneur. He is co-founder and Chairman of Equity Group Investments, a private investment firm. With an estimated net worth of US$6 billion, he is ranked as the 52nd richest American by Forbes.[1] On April 2, 2007, Zell bought Tribune Company, publisher of the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, New York Newsday and owner of the Chicago Cubs. The deal closed December 21, 2007, with Zell becoming Tribune Co. chairman and chief executive.
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[edit] Early life
Zell was born in Chicago in 1941 to Jewish immigrant parents from Poland who fled the country just before the Nazi invasion in 1939. Shortly after moving from Seattle to Chicago, Zell's father Bernard changed the family name from Zielonka to Zell.[2] He received his BA (1963) from the University of Michigan, where he was a member of the Alpha Epsilon Pi fraternity. He also received his JD (1966) from the University of Michigan Law School.[3]
[edit] Real estate business
Zell, with Robert Lurie went on to found the Equity Group Investments, LLC, which spawned three real estate public companies, including: Equity Residential, the largest apartment owner in the United States; Equity Office Properties, the largest office owner in the country; and Manufactured Home Communities, a mobile home company. In addition, Zell has created a number of public and private companies. He also controls SZ Investments LLC as his investment arm.
Zell is also Chairman of Capital Trust Inc., a finance and investment management company focused on the commercial real estate industry, and Anixter International, the world's largest distributor of communication products and electrical and electronic wire and cable.
Recently, the Blackstone Group completed its purchase of Zell's Equity Office Properties Trust for $39 billion,[4] and sold off many of the portfolio's properties for record amounts.[5]
[edit] Media investments
Between 1992 and 1999, Zell's Chillmark fund owned Jacor Communications, Inc., a successful radio broadcast group that included a television station. The company was sold to Clear Channel Communications in 1999.
On April 2, 2007, the Tribune Company announced their acceptance of Zell's offer to buy the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, and other media assets. On December 20, 2007, Zell took the company private. He plans to sell the Chicago Cubs, and sell the company's 25 percent interest in Comcast SportsNet Chicago. On December 21, 2007 Zell became the Chairman and CEO of the Tribune Company.
According to the Jewish daily The Forward, the purchase of the Times had stirred debate over how Zell, who has a reputation for being a "committed Zionist," would affect the paper's coverage of Israel.[6] One former Los Angeles Times political reporter, Ken Reich, assumes the paper's policies will be shaped to "some degree." Reich said, "If he cares about the State of Israel, he won’t want his newspaper to be out there chipping away at Israeli interests...It would not take very much tweaking by him to sharply alter the Times editorial policy on the Middle East. I tend to expect this to happen."[6]
Zell is known for using "salty" language in the newsroom.[7] In February 2008, The website LA Observed reprinted an internal memo that said:
Last week you may have encountered some colorful uses of the lexicon from Sam Zell that we are not used to hearing at the Times...But of course we still have the same expectations at the Times of what is correct in the workplace. It's not good judgment to use profane or hostile language and we can't tolerate that...In short, nothing changes; the fundamental rules of decorum and decency apply...Sam is a force of a nature; the rest of us are bound by the normal conventions of society.[8]
[edit] Philanthropy
A long-time supporter of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, he helped fund the Real Estate Department at Wharton, as well as the Zell-Lurie Institute at the Ross School of Business at University of Michigan. Zell also endowed the Zell Center for Risk Research at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, and the Samuel Zell and Robert Lurie Real Estate Center at the Wharton School. Zell has also donated significantly to his alma mater, the University of Michigan.
Zell, according to The Forward[6], is also "a major donor to causes in the Middle East. His donations include a $3.1 million donation to the Herzliya Interdisciplinary Center in Israel and separate donations to the Israel Center for Social and Economic Progress, a right-wing Israeli think tank. In the United States, he has given major gifts to such Jewish causes as the American Jewish Committee and a Chicago Jewish day school named after his father."
[edit] Political contributions
Zell has donated to both Republican and Democratic candidates — with more money going to the former — as well as to lobbying groups representing the real estate industry. According to an analysis of Federal Election Commission records by the Center for Public Integrity, "Zell has given more than $100,000 in political contributions since the 1998 election cycle, most of it supporting Republican causes."[9]
[edit] Controversies
In 2008, Zell announced a plan to place the Chicago Cubs and Wrigley Field up for sale separately in order to maximize profits. He also announced he would consider selling naming rights to Wrigley Field for anyone willing to put up the money. These announcements have been widely unpopular in Chicago[10][11] and a poll taken by the Chicago Sun-Times showed that 53% of 2,000 people who voted said they would no longer attend Cubs games if the field was renamed.[12] Zell also made a controversial statement in April 2008 at a conference in Los Angeles where he claimed, "this country needs a cleansing. We need to clean out all those people who never should have been in houses in the first place and who for sure shouldn't be getting sympathy."[13]
[edit] References
- ^ a b The 400 Richest Americans. Forbes (2007-09-20). Retrieved on 2007-09-25.
- ^ Katharine Q. Seelye, Terry Pristin (2007-03-25). Sam Zell, the 'grave dancer,' sees profit in newspapers. International Herald Tribune. Retrieved on 2007-04-03.
- ^ Billionaire Investor Sam Zell at Glance. Associated Press (2006-09-21). Retrieved on 2007-04-04.
- ^ Wilson, David (2007-02-08). Blackstone's Costly Buyout, Navistar's Listing. Bloomberg. Retrieved on 2007-04-05.
- ^ The Equity Office Triple Flips. Wall Street Journal.
- ^ a b c Nathaniel Popper, Billionaire Boychiks Battle for Media Empire: ‘Committed Zionist’ To Buy Papers With Troubled Ties to Community, The Forward, April 13 2007
- ^ Los Angeles Times staffers warned about behaving like Zell
- ^ Let Sam be Sam, but you be nice
- ^ McGarry, Brendan; Welsh, Ben. "In Political Contribution, Zell Leans Right and Wife Leans Left", Center for Public Integrity, April 4, 2007. (English)
- ^ "Cubs Fans Consider a Wrigley by Any Other Name", The Wall Street Journal, February 29, 2008. (English)
- ^ Wojciechowski, Gene. "Cubs' new owner should think again about renaming Wrigley", ESPN.com, March 2, 2008. (English)
- ^ Dodd, Mike. "For Cubs fans, renaming Wrigley is dealbreaker", USA Today, March 1, 2008. (English)
- ^ Clark, Andrew. "Bush Finds It Harder To Avoid the R Word", The Guardian, April 30, 2008. (English)
[edit] External links
- Sam Zell Biography
- The Zell Center for Risk Research at the Kellogg School of Management
- The Zell Lurie Institute: The University of Michigan
- The Samuel Zell and Robert Lurie Real Estate Center at Wharton
- The Zell entrepreneurship program at the Interdisciplinary Center, in Israel
- Detailed list of Zell's federal campaign contributions since 1979
- Zell's Year End Gift
- "What the Zell?" Chronicles one of the most-quotable men in journalism
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