Robert S. Pirie

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Robert S. Pirie (born May 8, 1934 in Chicago , † January 15, 2015 in Manhattan ) was an American lawyer , bank manager and book collector.

Life

Robert Pirie came from an economically successful family who ran department stores in Chicago . One uncle was Democratic presidential candidate Adlai Ewing Stevenson .

Pirie attended Buckley School in New York City , Hotchkiss School in Connecticut and studied law in Cambridge at Harvard College and Harvard Law School . He started his legal practice in Boston with Skadden and specialized in the then undeveloped field of Mergers & Acquisitions . From 1982 he advised NM Rothschild & Sons , on whose board he was promoted, clients such as James Hanson , Conrad Black and Rupert Murdoch on company acquisitions . He supported Robert Maxwell in taking over the Macmillan publishing group . He was a director at Bear Stearns & Co. and served on the board of SG Cowen Securities Corporation .

Pirie was active in the election campaign teams of the Democratic presidential candidates Eugene McCarthy and Harold Hughes and, like them, was blacklisted by Republican Richard Nixon , who also fought his political opponents with criminal means. Pirie mockingly described this as the highest rank he achieved in his political career.

Pirie inherited antiquities collected in his family and specialized in antiquarian English books from the 16th and 17th centuries, such as Francis Bacon , Thomas Hobbes , John Locke and John Dryden , which he made available to scholars and which he presented in the Grolier Club . He had a particular soft spot for John Donne . In the 1970s he was inducted into the British Roxburghe Club of Bibliophiles . His debut publication there was a bibliophile new edition of the Fragmenta regalia by Robert Naunton in his possession . In 1985 he was appointed a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences .

Fonts (selection)

  • Roy E. Schreiber, Robert S Pirie (Ed.): Robert Naunton: Fragmenta regalia: observations on the late Queene Elizabeth, hir times and fauorites . Roxburghe Club. 2002
  • John Donne, 1572-1631; a catalog of the anniversary exhibition of first and early editions of his works held at the Grolier Club, February 15 to April 12, 1972 . New York, Grolier Club 1972

literature

  • James Stourton: Great collectors of our time: art collecting since 1945 . London: Scala, 2007
  • Lincoln Caplan: Skadden: power, money, and the rise of a legal empire . New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1993

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Sam Roberts: Robert Pirie, 80, Lawyer and Banker in Mergers and Takeovers, Dies , obituary in: New York Times , January 28, 2015
  2. ↑ a b c Ben MCLannahan: Finance whizz at equal ease with tycoons and rare tomes , Obituary, in: Financial Times , February 8, 2015, p. 5
  3. ^ "Greatest achievement," MacLannahan, 2015
personal data
SURNAME Pirie, Robert S.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American lawyer, bank manager, and book collector
DATE OF BIRTH May 8, 1934
PLACE OF BIRTH Chicago
DATE OF DEATH January 15, 2015
Place of death Manhattan