Saul Steinberg Bio
Saul Phillip Steinberg was an American businessman and financier. Prior to turning thirty and forty, he became a millionaire and a billionaire. In 1968, he successfully acquired the larger Reliance Insurance Company by using Leasco, a computer leasing company he had founded. What made him most well-known were his failed attempts to take over Chemical Bank in 1969 and Walt Disney Productions in 1984.
Saul Steinberg Love Life
Steinberg had three marriages. Before getting divorced in 1974, he had three children with Barbara Herzog, his first wife, whom he had met in high school. Their three children are named Jonathon Steinberg , Laura and Nicholas.
After meeting Italian American Laura Bordoni Sconocchia Fisher in 1974 who had converted to Judaism before they were married Steinberg divorced his first wife. Julian was their son before their divorce.
In 1983, Steinberg married Gayfryd a businesswoman from Louisiana who was descended from Canada and had previously owned her own steel-pipe company. Before they were married, Gayfryd converted to Judaism as well. Steinberg was the adoptive father of Holden and the father to Rayne a boy from a previous marriage.
Saul Steinberg Cause of Death
On December 7, 2012, Steinberg, then 73 years old passed away on the same day as his mother, Anne Steinber. Saul Steinberg, a bold corporate thief who attacked companies’ shares to terrorize them for over thirty years, died on Friday at his Manhattan home. He received millions of dollars from some companies to vanish.
His daughter Laura Tisch Broumand confirmed the death. The family reported that on the same day, Anne Steinberg, his mother, who had previously sued Mr. Steinberg for an unpaid bill, died quietly in her sleep in Palm Beach, Florida.
Saul Steinberg Parents
Steinberg was the son of Julius and Anne Cohen Steinberg. He was born on August 13, 1939, into a Jewish family and raised in Brooklyn, New York. He had two sisters, Roni Sokoloff and Lynda Jurist, as well as one brother, Robert Steinberg.
Steinberg successfully completed his studies at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School in Philadelphia. Although some reports claim he graduated at age 18 in two years, he was identified as a member of the class of 1959.
Saul Steinberg Career
At the age of 22, Steinberg founded the IBM computer rental company Leasco Data Processing Equipment Corporation. When Steinberg did research on IBM for a paper he had written about the company while a Wharton student, he found that the company charged a premium to lease its computers. Steinberg found that he could offer computer leases at a price lower than IBM’s and still obtain bank financing for the entire cost of the computers by using the signed leases as collateral with lenders. Leasco grew quickly, and in 1965 it went public.
Leasco made an offer to purchase Reliance Insurance Company, a Philadelphia insurance company that was ten times larger. Reliance was established in 1817 to provide fire insurance, and it had been in business for 150 years. It was treated with caution. Computer leasing companies truly need capital, and insurance businesses have plenty of it. Steinberg gave the Reliance shareholders warrants on common stock and convertible subordinated debentures (instead of cash). Leasco was able to take over Reliance in 1968 after Reliance management hesitated and finally caved. At the age of 29, Steinberg took over Reliance.
One of the largest banks in the nation at the time, Chemical Bank, was one of the companies Steinberg attempted to take over in 1969. The attempt failed. Steinberg successfully bought Pergamon Press from Robert Maxwell, a British businessman.
At first, they were friendly, but things quickly soured, and Steinberg was able to convince British investors to back his plan to remove Maxwell from office.
However, Maxwell used borrowed funds in 1974 to repurchase Pergamon.
Following his appointment as CEO of Reliance, Steinberg and his brother managed the company as its primary executives for the next thirty years. Steinberg grew and took on a lot of debt during the junk bond era, supposedly by undercharging for its insurance policies. Apart from providing Saul with compensation, the company also paid dividends to its investors, among them the Steinberg family, who held a substantial stake in the business.
Steinberg hired dealmaker Henry Silverman at Reliance, who went on to become CEO of HFS Inc. and Cendant Corp. Steinberg and television magnate Joseph Wallach collaborated to buy Spanish-language TV stations and launch Telemundo, a Spanish-language media company, while Silverman remained with Reliance.
In 1995, Steinberg suffered a significant stroke. He had to relegate himself to a supporting role in Reliance management. Reliance’s financial problems were partly caused by leverage and low-quality insurance policy prices. The management of the company attempted to sell it. Reliance Group negotiated a sale agreement with Leucadia National in 2000 in return for debt and equity. However, this deal fell through in July 2000.
Reliance filed for bankruptcy in 2001, initiating a drawn-out liquidation process. In 2000, Stephen A. Schwarzman of the Blackstone Group bought Steinberg’s 17,000 square foot, 34-room duplex apartment at 740 Park Avenue in Manhattan for “just over or below $30 million.” Steinberg was forced to sell both his substantial art collection and the apartment.
