Everything about Sam Zell totally explained
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's ranked as the 52nd richest American by
Forbes. 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.
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. 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.
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,
and sold off many of the portfolio's properties for record amounts.
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. 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 wouldn't take very much tweaking by him to sharply alter the Times editorial policy on the Middle East. I tend to expect this to happen." 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're 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.
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
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'd consider selling naming rights to Wrigley Field for anyone willing to put up the money. These announcements have been widely unpopular in Chicago and a poll taken by the
Chicago Sun-Times showed that 53% of 2,000 people who voted said they'd no longer attend Cubs games if the field was renamed.
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."
Further Information
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