Elihu Menashe Black

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Elihu Menashe Black (born April 9, 1921 in Poland as Elihu Menashe Blachowitz , † February 3, 1975 in New York ) was an American investment banker and manager. From 1969 he was head of the United Brands Company .

His son Leon Black founded the investment and holding company Apollo Management in 1990 .

Life

Black came to the United States as a child and was a rabbi in Woodmere, New York for three and a half years . Then he retrained to become an investment banker .

In 1954 he became President of the American Seal-Kap Company , which manufactured packaging equipment for plastic bottle caps. Black renamed the company AMK after its teletype acronym and made it a holding company . He bought the John Morrell & Co. a company in the meat packaging industry .

In 1969 he acquired the United Fruit Company . It was only after the acquisition that he realized that the company's capital base was lower than he had assumed. He had United Fruit Company renamed United Brands Company . In October 1973 OPEC increased oil prices in concert and in September 1974 Hurricane Fifi-Orlene destroyed many banana plantations in Honduras.

On the morning of February 3, 1975, Black drove to his office on the 44th floor of the Pan Am Building in Manhattan, pulled the curtains, smashed the window with his briefcase, and jumped into Park Avenue.

When the United States Securities and Exchange Commission investigated the fall, it revealed that it had not recognized US $ 1.25 million in useful expenses to Oswaldo López Arellano , then President of Honduras from reptile funds, on United Brands' balance sheet . The process has been referred to in the press as the bananagate . The money had been transferred to a Swiss bank account. The account was opened by the Honduran Minister of Economic Affairs, José Abraham Bennaton Ramos. In return, the increase in export tax for United Brands Company resolved by parliament was not implemented. The reduced tax to the state of Honduras saved United Brands Company approximately $ 7.5 million.

Further research showed that the United Brands Company had paid an additional $ 0.75 million in useful expenses to a European official in the early 1970s, removing restrictions on United Brands Company's banana exports .

Black's jump out of the window was the model for the film Hudsucker .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Expensive and embarrassing . In: Der Spiegel . No. 20 , 1975 ( online - May 12, 1975 ).
  2. ↑ Thomas P. Anderson, Politics in Central America: Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaragua , Greenwood Publishing Group, 1988, 256 pp. 136
  3. ^ Time , April 21, 1975, Energy, Bananas and Israeli Cash
  4. ↑ Crooked business . In: Der Spiegel . No. 28 1975 ( online - July 7, 1975 ).
personal data
SURNAME Black, Elihu Menashe
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Blachowitz, Elihu Menashe (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American entrepreneur director of the United Bands Company
DATE OF BIRTH April 9, 1921
PLACE OF BIRTH Poland
DATE OF DEATH 3rd February 1975
Place of death New York City