FILE - Sam Zell, chairman of Equity Group Investments, and chairman of Equity International, smiles during an interview by Neil Cavuto, on the Fox Business Network, in New York, on Aug. 6, 2013. Zell, a Chicago real estate magnate who earned a multibillion-dollar fortune and a reputation as "the grave dancer" for his ability to revive moribund properties, died on Thursday, May 18, 2023. He was 81.
Bearded and blunt-spoken, Zell reveled in bucking traditional wisdom. He had a golden touch with real estate, and got his start managing apartment buildings as a college student. By the time he reached his 70s, he had amassed a fortune estimated at $3.8 billion. Real estate was his trademark, but as he noted in an interview shortly before making the ill-fated Tribune deal, it represented only about 25% of his holdings.
His father was a wholesale jeweler who dabbled successfully in real estate investment and the stock market. The young Zell took pictures at his 8th-grade prom and sold them, and later took to buying Playboy magazines in downtown Chicago and reselling them to his classmates in Hebrew school in the suburbs for a 200% markup.
He later co-founded the Samuel Zell & Robert H. Lurie Institute for Entrepreneurial Studies at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business in 1999 with Lurie’s widow, Ann. Zell loved risk, both in his business dealings and his personal life. He once acknowledged riding his motorcycle as fast as 145 mph on a trip across the South American pampas.
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