David Murdock

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David Murdock (1985)

David Howard Murdock (born April 10, 1923 in Ohio ) is an American entrepreneur and self-made billionaire. He holds the largest stake in the Dole Food Company and is, among other things, the owner of the Castle and Cooke real estate company .

Life

Adolescent years

Murdock was born on April 10, 1923, the son of an insurance agent in rural Ohio . At school, his grades were very bad and he was teased by his classmates. He dropped out of high school prematurely after a kerosene fire burned down his parents' house, which also seriously injured his mother. He then worked on a duck farm, at a gas station and as a riveter until he was drafted into the US Army . There he trained recruits to shoot at various locations. In his spare time he read the biographies of successful entrepreneurs like Andrew Carnegie and Henry Ford , which stimulated his mind. He was trying to find out what the secret of their success was.

Successes and failures as an entrepreneur

After the Second World War , he ended up in Detroit and was initially homeless. Using his savings and a $ 1,200 loan from a friend, he bought a run-down restaurant, renovated it, and sold it two years later for a profit that was double his investment. This business success marked his future career. At the age of 23 he drove to Phoenix , Arizona with his wife in their trailer . The city boomed with the arrival of many Americans in the Sun Belt . He teamed up with a carpenter and started building houses. He dug the earth, poured the foundations with concrete and organized the building materials. He later bought cheap land, built houses on it, and sold them at a high profit. He was so successful that he went public with his real estate company in the early 1960s.

When the real estate market in Phoenix collapsed 17 years later due to oversupply, his empire also collapsed. He had to sell almost all of his holdings to pay off his debts. But he managed to save $ 3 million on the fortune he had diverted from his construction company and moved to Los Angeles , California . He looked for companies that were undervalued and invested in them. He was successful again and managed to amass a fortune of $ 400 million by 1982. In the same year he took over 32% of Flexi-Van, the largest truck rental company for container transport in the USA, and became its CEO. In 1985 Flexi-Van merged with the Dole Food Company , thereby also becoming its CEO. Three years later, Murdock acquired the remaining shares in Flexi-Van for $ 144 million.

In 1991 he had two luxury hotels with 350 rooms built on his Hawaiian island of Lānaʻi for 550 million US dollars (including operating losses), but they remained largely empty. In 2012 he sold the island to Larry Ellison for $ 300 million . Also in the 1990s, he built the “Sherwood Country Club” with a golf course and land for luxury villas in the Los Angeles area for 285 million US dollars. The properties were sluggish to sell, however, and he had to sell shares in the Dole Food Company for $ 226 million to avert bankruptcy.

Real estate company Castle and Cooke began building single-family housing estates in Mililani , Oahu , in 1968 . In 1985 it was taken over by Murdocks Flexi-Van. The final $ 2 billion project with 3,500 residential units was completed in 2020.

Private life

Murdocks North Carolina Research Campus in Kannapolis (2008)

Murdock was married five times and had three children, two of whom died in tragic accidents. His third wife, who came from Germany, died of cancer in 1985. He explains in interviews that he wanted to be 125 years old with a special diet without meat, with lots of protein and lots of vitamins. In 2006 he founded his own health and nutritional science research center in Kannapolis , North Carolina , in which he had invested $ 800 million by 2014. It is endowed with an annual donation of US $ 15 million.

Web links

Commons : David H. Murdock  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Peter W. Bernstein, Annalyn Swan: All the Money in the World button Doubleday Publishing Group, 2008, pp 26-28
  2. ^ All the Money in the World
  3. ^ All the Money in the World
  4. ↑ Hawaiian Merger for Flexi-Van nytimes.com , March 13, 1985, accessed August 19, 2020
  5. ↑ Chairman Paying $ 144 Million: Murdock Buying All of Flexi-Van latimes.com , March 31, 1988, accessed August 19, 2020
  6. ↑ Busted Billionaire? forbes.com , April 20, 1997, accessed August 19, 2020 by a
  7. ↑ Castle & Cooke Hawai'i castlecookehawaii.com , accessed August 19, 2020
  8. ↑ Castle & Cooke to begin sales for Koa Ridge community bizjournals.com , June 30, 2020, accessed August 19, 2020
  9. ↑ A 90-year-old billionaire and the power of fruit welt.de , August 13, 2013, accessed on August 19, 2020
  10. ↑ Murdock to provide $ 15M annually to Kannapolis research institute bizjournals.com , September 30, 2014, accessed August 20, 2020
personal data
SURNAME Murdock, David
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Dole, David Howard (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American entrepreneur
DATE OF BIRTH April 10, 1923
PLACE OF BIRTH Ohio (state)