Chicago real estate tycoon Sam Zell, who made a billion-dollar fortune through his ability to revitalize ailing properties and became known as the “grave dancer,” has died.
According to Equity Group Investments, a company he founded in 1968, Zell died Thursday at home of complications from a recent illness.
In a statement, the company said, “Sam Zell was a self-made, visionary entrepreneur.”
“During a career spanning more than 60 years, he has founded and grown hundreds of companies and created countless jobs.”
“Although his investments spanned industries around the world, he was best recognized for his pivotal role in creating the modern real estate investment trust that is now a $4 trillion-plus industry.”
Zell, here in 2014, on the Fox Business Show “Opening Bell with Maria Bartiromo”
Pictured: Zell walks on Capitol Hill in Washington in June 2007 after meeting with Senate Democratic leadership.
According to Forbes, Zell had amassed a net worth of $5.3 billion. Pictured here in 2017
Bearded and outspoken, Zell enjoyed defying traditional wisdom.
He had a keen sense of real estate and started managing apartment buildings as a student.
By the time he turned 70, he had an estimated net worth of $3.8 billion.
Zell sold Equity Office, the office tower company he spent three decades building, to the Blackstone Group in 2007 for $39 billion.
It was the largest private equity transaction in history, personally raising $1 billion for Zell.
A month later, he made another deal that ultimately tarnished his image: acquiring the ailing Tribune Co. for $13 billion.
The Tribune filed for bankruptcy protection a year later during the global financial crisis after advertising revenue fell as more readers got their news online.
Zell famously called the takeover a “deal from hell”.
A year later, the media giant filed for bankruptcy as a result of the takeover.
Real estate was his trademark, but as he noted in an interview just before the ill-fated Tribune deal, it only made up about 25 percent of his holdings.
Zell acquired Tribune Co., owner of the Chicago Tribune, in a deal he later described as a “deal from hell.”
Zell, photographed here, in his Chicago office in September 1997
He is survived by his wife Helen, three children and nine grandchildren
A statement released by his company said Zell died as a result of a recent illness
Zell was born in Highland Park, Illinois, in September 1941, four months after his immigrant parents arrived in the United States.
Zell’s parents had fled Poland before the Nazis invaded.
His father was a jewelry wholesaler who successfully engaged in real estate investments and the stock market.
Young Zell took pictures at his 8th grade prom and sold them. He later began buying Playboy magazines in downtown Chicago and reselling them at a 200 percent markup to his Hebrew school classmates in the suburbs.
He achieved his first successes in real estate while studying at the University of Michigan.
After managing the building he lived in for a free rent, he switched to managing other properties, eventually starting an apartment management company and then selling it.
After briefly working at a Chicago law firm, he teamed up with his Ann Arbor brother, Robert Lurie, and they began acquiring distressed real estate from developers suffering from high interest rates.
This practice continued with great success during the recession of the mid-1970s.
He later co-founded the Samuel Zell & Robert H. Lurie Institute for Entrepreneurial Studies at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business with Lurie’s widow, Ann, in 1999.
A big fan of motorcycles, he is pictured here with the Zell’s Angels motorcycle club
As a teenager, he reportedly sold Playboy magazines and sold them to classmates for a 200% markup
Zell’s reputation grew, and in 1976 the controversial investor spoke of his penchant for spotting and pursuing opportunities in an article titled “The Grave Dancer.” The nickname stuck.
After the savings and credit crisis of the 1980s, Zell went on a real estate buying spree. He also encouraged institutional investors to pool their money in commercial real estate when it was on the rise in the early 1990s.
Zell loved risk, both in business and in personal life. He once admitted to driving his motorcycle at speeds of up to 145 miles per hour on a trip through the South American pampas.
His love of motorcycles led him to form a group called Zell’s Angels, made up mostly of fellow business tycoons who would take him on trips around the world. Over the years he has been an avid skier, racquetball player, paintball enthusiast and sports fan, with interests in the Chicago Bulls and Chicago White Sox.
Zell was extremely protective of his private life. He was reportedly married at least three times and had three children. He maintained homes in Chicago and Southern California.
Zell 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.
Scott Peppet, President of the Chai Trust Company and Sam’s son-in-law, said, “Sam has spent his life testing his limits and helping those around him to do the same.”
“He was a self-made entrepreneur, an industry founder and leader, a brilliant dealmaker, a generous philanthropist, and the head of a family he deeply loved and protected.”
“He had an unrestrained passion for life, a brilliant mind, an infectious wit and a deep sense of civic responsibility and personal loyalty. All who loved him and learned from him will miss him terribly.’