Real Estate Tycoon Bankrupts
Chicago Tribune Company
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Who Is Samuel Zell
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 attended ivy League
colleges on scholarships.
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A Huckster Out Of The Gate
While a student, Sam began buying slum housing units, fixing them
up and renting them to other students. After college and law school,
also at Ann Arbor, he began buying up property elsewhere, including
Toledo, Ohio, Tampa, Florida, and Reno, Nevada. He and a fraternity
brother, Robert Lurie, eventually formed a business partnership and
through tax advantages and heavy borrowing, quickly developed into a
major force in real estate.
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He Sold All His Real Estate For $44 Billion
In 2006 Sammie Zell sold his real estate holdings for $39 billion
to the Blackstone Group in the biggest leveraged buyout ever. Even
before that deal, Forbes estimated Zell's worth at about $4.5 billion.
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The Blackstone Group
The Blackstone Group is a company that provides private equity,
financial advisory, and investment management services. The firm
backed a total of some US$370 billion in deals in the United States in
2006.
Blackstone stock
lost $15 billion for American
retirees. And when their loans go sour, the American taxpayer will
bail them out.
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Zell Bought The Media Giant The Tribune Company
Zell went to the band, and the tribune employee's pension fund, and
borrowed $ 8.5 billion.
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So What Is The Score
Here?
Sam Zell bought the Tribune company for
$8.5 billion in 2007 and in 2008 the company declared bankruptcy. It
appears he used the employee's pension fund to provide the funds for the
purchase.
At any rate someone got $8.5 billion,
the employees lost their pensions and jobs, and Sammie Zell is sitiing
pretty. On his other scam he got $42 billion from the Zio-Firm of
Blackstone, and they got the money from the bank. So that means the US
taxpayers are really the ones holding the bag on this scam.
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