Author: Peter C. NewmanPublisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 318
Book Description
Bronfman Dynasty
Author: Peter C. NewmanKing of the Castle
Author: Peter Charles NewmanPublisher: Atheneum Books for Young Readers
ISBN: 9780689109638
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 328
Book Description
It is one of the world's great fortunes, the empire founded by Sam Bronfman and carried on through his family, a kingdom worth more than $7 billion nurtured on bootleg alcohol and sustained through decades of deals, scandals, legal explosions and intrafamily warfare. At its heart is the Seagram Company Ltd., the world's largest distilling operation, responsible for more than one million bottles of liquor per day sold in the U.S. alone, but its reach stretches far beyond that--to oil companies, hotels, mines, factories and real estate all over the world. Except that they are almost certainly richer and without a doubt more secretive, the Bronfmans have become the Rothschilds of the New World, and here at last is the extraordinary story of their lives, times and turbulent fortunes, chronicled by best-selling journalist Peter C. Newman. -- From publisher's description.
The Bronfmans
Author: Nicholas FaithPublisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 1429904127
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 364
Book Description
For decades, the Bronfman family ruled Seagram's and the liquor industry. This is the story of their meteoric rise and spectacular fall. The story of the Bronfman family is a fascinating and improbable saga. It is dominated by "Mr. Sam," the single greatest figure in the history of the liquor business, the man who made drinking whiskey respectable in the United States and who in the 1950s and 1960s built Seagram into the first worldwide empire in wine and spirits. After Sam's death in 1971, his oldest son, Edgar, maintained the business, though he was distracted by his matrimonial problems. Nevertheless, in the 1980s he masterminded a major coup when he translated a small investment in oil made by his father into a 25 percent stake in the mighty DuPont company. But in the 1990s, Edgar allowed his second son, Edgar Jr., to indulge his ambition to become a media tycoon. The stake in DuPont was sold, and the money reinvested in Universal, the film and theme-park empire. Edgar Jr. then paid more than $10 billion to buy Polygram Records and thus fulfill his fancy to be king of the world's music business. But at the same time, he remained in charge of the liquor business, which started to stagnate—indeed, to fall apart. Then came the final disaster when the increasingly divided family sold out to Jean-Marie Messier, overreaching empire builder of Vivendi, the French conglomerate. But the story of this amazing family over the past century is about more than booze and business. The Bronfmans is a spectacular account that details the larger-than-life personalities and bitter rivalries that have made the family so famous and, sometimes, so infamous.
Leo
Author: Leo KolberPublisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
ISBN: 0773571574
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 322
Book Description
For thirty years Kolber was chairman of Cemp Investments, the Bronfman trust, and Cadillac Fairview Corporation, one of the largest real estate firms in North America. He charts his directorship of Dupont and other companies in which the Bronfmans held an important interest and reveals the inner workings of mega deals, including the Bronfman acquisition of MGM in the 1960s. The memoir also offers a sobering look at Edgar Bronfman Jr's disasterous decision to sell Seagram's 25 percent interest in DuPont in order to buy MCA-Universal Studios, a deal that Kolber strongly opposed and which signalled the dissolution of a great business empire.
Distilled
Author: Charles BronfmanPublisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 1443448494
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 290
Book Description
While much has been written about his father, Sam, a titan of industry, there is no public record of Charles Bronfman’s thoughts on his own life, family, career and his significant accomplishments in sport and philanthropy. Distilled does just that, chronicling key events in the life of the heir to one of Canada’s great fortunes. Born in 1931 to the fabulously wealthy Bronfmans, Charles grew up in a 20-room mansion with many staff. Via their control of the distilling giant Seagram, the Bronfman family dominated the liquor business with brands such as Crown Royal, V.O. and Chivas Regal. By the 1980s, Seagram was also the biggest shareholder of DuPont and by the 1990s, the family’s wealth was in the billions, culminating in the $35-billion sale of Seagram to France’s Vivendi, which turned into a financial and family disaster. In Distilled, Charles reflects on all of it---his relationship with his parents, his brother Edgar, working in the family business, landing Canada’s first big league baseball franchise (the Montreal Expos), leading a philanthropic life by promoting Canadian identity through Heritage Minutes and supporting Israel through countless innovative initiatives including the globally respected Birthright Israel---and to how the Bronfman family splintered over the sale of Seagram.
Skyscraper
Author: Benjamin FlowersPublisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812202600
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 239
Book Description
Selected by Choice magazine as an Outstanding Academic Title Nowhere in the world is there a greater concentration of significant skyscrapers than in New York City. And though this iconographic American building style has roots in Chicago, New York is where it has grown into such a powerful reflection of American commerce and culture. In Skyscraper: The Politics and Power of Building New York City in the Twentieth Century, Benjamin Flowers explores the role of culture and ideology in shaping the construction of skyscrapers and the way wealth and power have operated to reshape the urban landscape. Flowers narrates this modern tale by closely examining the creation and reception of three significant sites: the Empire State Building, the Seagram Building, and the World Trade Center. He demonstrates how architects and their clients employed a diverse range of modernist styles to engage with and influence broader cultural themes in American society: immigration, the Cold War, and the rise of American global capitalism. Skyscraper explores the various wider meanings associated with this architectural form as well as contemporary reactions to it across the critical spectrum. Employing a broad array of archival sources, such as corporate records, architects' papers, newspaper ads, and political cartoons, Flowers examines the personal, political, cultural, and economic agendas that motivate architects and their clients to build ever higher. He depicts the American saga of commerce, wealth, and power in the twentieth century through their most visible symbol, the skyscraper.
Spirited Commitment
Author: Roderick MacLeodPublisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
ISBN: 0773537104
Category : Family foundations
Languages : en
Pages : 444
Book Description
An institutional history of one of Canada's premier philanthropic organizations.
Encyclopedia of History of American Management
Author: Morgen WitzelPublisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1843711311
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 583
Book Description
Containing more than 250 entries, this unique and ambitious work traces the development of management thinking and major business culture in North America. Entries range from 600 words to 2500 words and contain concise biographical detail, a critical analysis of the thinkers' doctrines and ideas and a bibliography including the subject's major works and a helpful listing of minor works.
The History of Foreign Investment in the United States, 1914-1945
Author: Mira WILKINSPublisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674045181
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 1009
Book Description
Mira Wilkins, the foremost authority on foreign investment in the United States, continues her magisterial history in a work covering the critical years 1914-1945. Wilkins includes all long-term inward foreign investments, both portfolio (by individuals and institutions) and direct (by multinationals), across such enterprises as chemicals and pharmaceuticals, textiles, insurance, banks and mortgage providers, other service sector companies, and mining and oil industries. She traces the complex course of inward investments, presents the experiences of the investors, and examines the political and economic conditions, particularly the range of public policies, that affected foreign investments. She also offers valuable discussions on the intricate cross-investments of inward and outward involvements and the legal precedents that had long-term consequences on foreign investment. At the start of World War I, the United States was a debtor nation. By the end of World War II, it was a creditor nation with the strongest economy in the world. Integrating economic, business, technological, legal, and diplomatic history, this comprehensive study is essential to understanding the internationalization of the American economy, as well as broader global trends.
The Jews in America Trilogy
Author: Stephen BirminghamPublisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 1504038959
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 672
Book Description
Three New York Times bestsellers chronicle the rise of America’s most influential Jewish families as they transition from poor immigrants to household names. In his acclaimed trilogy, author Stephen Birmingham paints an engrossing portrait of Jewish American life from the colonial era through the twentieth century with fascinating narrative and meticulous research. The collection’s best-known book, “Our Crowd” follows nineteenth-century German immigrants with recognizable names like Loeb, Sachs, Lehman, Guggenheim, and Goldman. Turning small family businesses into institutions of finance, banking, and philanthropy, they elevated themselves from Lower East Side tenements to Park Avenue mansions. Barred from New York’s gentile elite because of their religion and humble backgrounds, they created their own exclusive group, as affluent and selective as the one that had refused them entry. The Grandees travels farther back in history to 1654, when twenty-three Sephardic Jews arrived in New York. Members of this small and insulated group—considered the first Jewish community in America—soon established themselves as wealthy businessmen and financiers. With descendants including poet Emma Lazarus, Barnard College founder Annie Nathan Meyer, and Supreme Court Justice Benjamin N. Cardozo, these families were—and still are—hugely influential in the nation’s culture, politics, and economics. In “The Rest of Us,” Birmingham documents the third major wave of Jewish immigration: Eastern Europeans who swept through Ellis Island between 1880 and 1924. These refugees from czarist Russia and Polish shtetls were considered barbaric, uneducated, and too steeped in the traditions of the “old country” to be accepted by the well-established German American Jews. But the new arrivals were tough, passionate, and determined. Their incredible rags to riches stories include those of the lives of Hollywood tycoon Samuel Goldwyn, Broadway composer Irving Berlin, makeup mogul Helena Rubenstein, and mobster Meyer Lansky. This unforgettable collection comprises a comprehensive account of the Jewish American upper class, their opulent world, and their lasting mark on American society.