He was a legend in American capitalism.
One of these last self-made billionaires who built his fortune with willpower and determination. Sam Zell is a legendary real estate investor who has made billions of dollars by gambling on distressed commercial properties and turning them into winning bets.
The famed real estate investor died on May 18 at age 81.
"It is with great sadness that we announce that Sam Zell, chairman of Equity Group Investments, Equity LifeStyle Properties, Equity Residential, and Equity Commonwealth, died today at home due to complications from a recent illness," his company said in a statement.
His net wealth was valued at $5.9 billion as of May 18, according to Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Born in Chicago to immigrant parents from Poland, Zell distinguished himself from business codes with his colorful personality. He was ubiquitous in the media, using colorful language and displaying his passion for motorcycles. This passion for motorcycles led him to create the group Zell's Angels, which was made up of other tycoons with whom they rode motorcycles around the world.
'I Was Dancing on the Skeletons of Other People's Mistakes'
Zell's career began when he was a student at the University of Michigan. He managed the building in which he lived in exchange for a free rent. He then moved on to managing other properties. He then teamed up with his old college friend Robert Lurie. They began to acquire distressed properties, a strategy that the recession of the mid-1970s favored.
He rose to fame in 1976 when he wrote about his strategy in an article. The article, which was published in Real Estate Review, was titled "The Grave Dancer,” a nickname that will stick with him and follow him everywhere as it sums up his business philosophy.
"I was dancing on the skeletons of other people’s mistakes,” he wrote.
He earned a reputation of reviving dying real estate businesses.
Risk-loving Zell had embarked on a fury of real estate acquisitions in the 1980s and later encouraged institutional investors to pool their money to acquire commercial real estate.
At the time of his death he was at the head of a company present in real estate, radio stations, drug stores, parking lots, mattresses and Schwinn bicycles.
The year 2007 is an important year in Zell's career. That year he is famous for selling his company Equity Office to Blackstone in 2007 for $39 billion. This was the largest private equity transaction in history.
The cash obtained in this deal will allow him to finalize a huge acquisition the same year. It is the LBO's acquisition of Tribune Co., which owns the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, Newsday, the Chicago Cubs and a portfolio of television and radio stations.
Tribune Co.
He is going to cut thousands of jobs to make the media group profitable. He took the company private, using a legal scheme in the process that will allow him not to pay a lot of taxes. He will then sell some assets of Tribune Co. -- Cubs and Newsday -- but this will not allow him to avoid filing for bankruptcy a year later. Some Zell advocates blame the resounding failure on the 2008 financial crisis.
"Sam Zell was a self-made, visionary entrepreneur. He launched and grew hundreds of companies during his 60-plus-year career and created countless jobs," Equity Group Investments said. "Although his investments spanned industries across the globe, he was most widely recognized for his critical role in creating the modern real estate investment trust, which today is a more than $4 trillion industry."
He is survived by his wife, Helen; his sister Julie Baskes and her husband, Roger Baskes; his sister Leah Zell; his three children, Kellie Zell and son-in-law Scott Peppet, Matthew Zell, and JoAnn Zell; and his nine grandchildren.
