Leopold D. Silberstein

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Leopold Dias Silberstein (born February 14, 1904 in Berlin ; died November 13, 1981 in Zurich ) was a German-Jewish-American entrepreneur. He is considered to be one of the first corporate raiders in the United States .

Life

Leopold D. Silberstein's father worked in the import-export business. Leopold D. graduated from the University of Berlin with a degree in economics in 1924 . He then worked on the Berlin stock exchange . He later moved to the Bank von Goldschmidt-Rothschild & Co. as an accountant. From 1930 he worked for the investment company Bechhold & Co KG and was also a self-employed banker. In 1933 the Jew fled with his wife and children from the National Socialists to Amsterdam. There he worked for the investment company Louis Korijn & Co. After the German invasion of the Netherlands , he left the country in a boat in 1940 with his belongings and the funds, which he was able to get hold of in a short time.

His wife and children were allowed to stay in the UK while he was forced to move to another part of the British Commonwealth . He was shipped to Australia, where he received an offer to join a pioneer battalion. He refused. Due to his work in the Dutch vigilante group , he had Dutch travel documents. With this he traveled to Shanghai in 1941 . Since he had deposited a large part of his wealth in the accounts of neutral Portugal during his time in the Netherlands , he got access to these funds in Shanghai with the help of the Portuguese consul. As a result, he invested in buildings and land in Shanghai. He involved the consul in his business and thus received diplomatic immunity. After the part of Shanghai inhabited by foreigners was taken over by the Japanese troops in December 1941, he became part of the Portuguese Commission for the Exchange of Prisoners. When the Portuguese consul was ordered back home in 1943 because of his liberal issuing of passports, Leopold Silberstein also had to leave Shanghai. In Goa he separated from the consul and cooperated with the British secret service, to which he gave information about the situation in Shanghai. In gratitude for this he was able to return to his family in Great Britain.

On September 30, 1948, he moved to the United States . There he received American citizenship on July 9, 1954. He founded the investment company Uno Equities Inc. In 1950, his focus was on the Pennsylvania Coal and Coke Company . The company was losing $ 100,000 on sales of $ 6 million annually, but had $ 4 million in fixed assets. He and his supporters succeeded in acquiring around 75,000 of the 148,000 shares traded by the spring of 1951. This gave them a majority of the voting rights. At the shareholders' meeting on April 3, 1951, he surprised management by announcing that new management should be elected and that he and his supporters had the appropriate votes. The takeover was one of the first “surprise coups” in the post-war era and aroused the boards of many companies and focused their interest on who was buying the company's shares and for what purposes.

As a result, the Pennsylvania Coal and Coke (trading as Penn-Texas Corporation from 1954) sold their coal mines and began to invest in other branches of the economy, especially in mechanical engineering and in companies important for military armaments. Thus, among others, Industrial Brownhoist Corporation in 1953 and Colt's Manufacturing Company and Chandler Evans in 1955 . When he took over Chandler Evans, he was supported by the journalist and entrepreneur David Karr , who later became known as the KGB informant . From 1956 Silberstein began to acquire shares in the Fairbanks-Morse Group , also with the support of Swiss banks. After it became known that Silberstein and his Penn-Texas Corporation were planning to take over the company, the company began to fight back. The takeover battle became more and more a financial risk for Penn-Texas Corporation due to the loans it had taken out. Eventually his colleagues lost patience with Silberstein and he resigned on June 24, 1958 from his positions as President and Chairman of the Board of the Society. A short time later he also had to vacate his seat on the supervisory board. He was compensated for a four-year consulting contract worth $ 40,000 annually.

The takeovers led u. a. also at the instigation of Thomas J. Dodd from 1955 on investigations by the US Senate. Among other things, it was also examined whether it could be Soviet influence.

After his departure, he no longer appeared in public.

Leopold D. Silberstein was married to Mathilde "Tilly" Tiger (1904–1980). The couple had a daughter (Elizabeth, married Cats) and a son (Charles). Leopold D. Silberstein died on November 13, 1981 in Zurich and was buried in the cemetery Oberer Friesenberg of the Israelitische Kultusgemeinde .

literature

  • Diana B. Henriques: The White Sharks of Wall Street. Thomas Mellon Evans and the Original Corporate Raiders . Simon and Schuster, 2001, ISBN 0-7432-0267-8 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Proceedings of Congress and General Congressional Publications, Volume 101, Part 3 (March 15, 1955 to April 1, 1955) - March 23, 1955
  2. ↑ Peter Hug: Tax evasion and the legend of the anti-Nazi origin of banking secrecy . In: Jakob Tanner, Sigrif Weigel (Ed.): Memory, Money and Law. On dealing with the past of the Second World War . vdf Hochschulverlag, Zurich 2000 ( sp-ps.ch [PDF]).
  3. ^ Newspapers.com: Arizona Daily Star (Tucson, Arizona) - June 25, 1958, p. 8.
  4. ↑ Tombstone at findagrave.com
personal data
SURNAME Silberstein, Leopold D.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Silberstein, Leopold Dias (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-Jewish-American entrepreneur
DATE OF BIRTH February 14, 1904
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH November 13, 1981
Place of death Zurich