Sam Zell donating $60 million to Ross School
Sam Zell is donating $60 million to the Ross School of Business. $10 million is to be used as seed money for Michigan entrepreneurs that have launched startups that have made it to the seeding stage of development. A stated goal is that it will develop the local economy and bring jobs and prestige to the region.
Pretty cool stuff.
Or just give Zell "featured artist status"
"The Ross School of Business (feat. Xhibit and Sam Zell)"
"Sam Zell, have you ever feated on anyone before?"
He still has a ways to go to catch Ross... how about some friendly competition fellas!
I think Ross would get very Zell-ous if we did that.
...it would be much better than having a Sam Zell School of Journalism.
Reminds me of the Anaheim Angels of Los Angeles. Or is that the other way around?
I kind of like "Samuel Zell & Robert H. Lurie Institute for Entrepreneurial Studies"; has a nice ring to it. But unfortunately that's already taken.
If any place needs the money, it's Ross.
The Masters of Entrepreneurship that they started a few years back is really doing well and it'd be great to see even more highly sought after jobs and businesses come to the area.
I watch CNBC all the time and they have Sam Zell as a guest host often. Smart guy obviously. Him and Ken Langone (Home Depot co-founder) are two guys that I pay attention and watch when they are on.
I'm not going to rip on a dude who just gave $60 million to the University, but there are many, many people in the business community who do not think Zell is a good guy.
Let's be honest: You don't amass a fortune of $5 billion without screwing some people along the way.
Case in point....
Never ceases to amaze me that someone with this much money has such bad hair.
How much money does Donald Trump have? We never really know, except it's usually a lot less than he says he's worth. At least twice in the past 30 years his personal net worth has been negative, really negative, and that's to say nothing of his four corporate bankruptcies. Four. But he loves to talk about how valuable he is, personally, even if he's lost boatloads of investor money. When Trump gives something away, it usually isn't coming out of his pocket, and he sometimes reneges on the agreement. Let's hope Zell isn't the same way, he doesn't exactly have a stellar track record either. I'd be curious as to exactly where this $60M is coming from.
I'd say it probably has a bit more to do with the internet crushing the papers...
Watch "Page One: Inside the New York Times". A great documentary. It goes into what Zell was doing with the Chicago Tribune and he really comes across as a POS who had no business being within 10,000 feet of a newspaper.
...the Tribune company had plenty of market challenges, but those shouldn't excuse his well documented incompetence as a leader. There might be something to his entrepreneurial model: somehow his investments seem to have a way of working out well for him, and being disastrous for his equity partners...
I am sure there were management issues that could be traced to his ownership, but "rich assholes" are pretty far down the list of why most newspapers are struggling,
...Zell specifically decimated the Tribune Company, which ran the Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times.
While pretty much every major newspaper has had big, big challenges, the NYT, Wash Post, and WSJ etc have weathered them far better than the Tribune or LAT (who went bankrupt b/c of Zell's financial machinations and loading them up in debt in an LBO).
He's been sued by employees b/c he used their retirement money (illegally) to fund the deal, and he's been pursued by the IRS b/c he structured the deals to "avoid" paying taxes. To top that off, both those papers (and in particular the Tribune) are nothing close to as good as they were, and are now far behind the other papers I mentioned, particularly digitally.
I could go on, including the sexual harrassment by managers he brought in, but you get the idea; there were more than "management issues traced to his ownership."
http://www.neontommy.com/news/2010/11/la-times-employees-suing-zell-sco…
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/how-zell-is-sinking-trib…
Oh, I'm sure Zell has done some shady stuff; I remember his name from a couple of articles I've read about the fall of the Tribune. But at the same time, he never struck me as needlessly meddlesome in the everyday affrairs. Papers and magazines have always been vanity projects to an extent; outside of NYT, WSJ, and maybe the Washington Post, I don't know many "city" papers that have consistently been profitable. Most struggled with the transition to digital, and even papers that seem to have gotten a decent handle on it (particularly NYT and WaPo under Bezos) have had trouble staying relevant given some of the constraints the medium continues to be hampered by (e.g. remaining beholden to word count for longer stories online).
Here in NYC, the Times really isn't doing all that well; it is still a big paper, but they already had to lease out big parts of their nice new building in Midtown, and there have been dismissals and people leaving at a decent clip. I'm not the first person to say papers are struggling, and crappy ownership is absolutely part of it, but I just don't think good ownership would have really been able to save papers like the LA Times and the Tribune from the struggles they've experienced. Maybe dull them slightly, but no amount of business insight would have helped in lots of these cases without absolutely radical changes in management.
It destroyed my great great great grandfathers candle company.
The person who actually knows what they are talking about gets downvoted by people who are just making assumptions... funny how that works.
I wish I were in a position to donate $60MM. This country is excellent.
but would go even further and ask why give it to a university at all? Why not try and end world hunger or homelessness or something. A number of years ago now Ted Turner was interviewed and challanged the worlds billionaires to donate half their fortunes to elmnating world hunger. He stated that if only the billionaires did this it could elimintae it completely. The sad fact is most rich people are rich because they are ruthless and greedy. I do believe he donated half his fortune though...
The word "entrepreneur" does more good than giving money to homeless people? That seems unlikely. Surely there are many suitable synonyms for entrepreneur that render its lexical value inconsequential.
obviously you're one of those people who, you know...has a home to live in and food on your table. I would bet that to those many millions of individuals who dont have those things it makes a big difference. I'm not talking about going past a homeless person and dropping a dollar in their coffee cup, I'm talking about finding real solutions to the problem. You think giving money to a business school is more valuable than that? I guess we just disagree, which is fine.
If this money serves as the capital needed to start companies which eventually employ 100k people in SE Michigan, I don't see how you could classify this as a bad thing. It's the whole "Give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he'll eat forever" situation. The goal is to create objects and organizations that are self sustaining, and this eliminates the need for Government and charitable organizations to keep people afloat.
Trust me, I don't believe the business community is perfect. But capitalism has lifted more people out of povevrty than any other system ever created.
I never said it was a bad thing, i simply implied there are better things. Also, I didn't say they should give these people handouts, because that never works, as you point out. What I'm talking about is developing social programs to get these people back on their feet and into the workforce. I'm not advocating giving this money to charities. I'm saying there are ways to combat homelessness and hunger and that money in the right peoples hands could go a long way in doing that.
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Eh, as someone who graduated from LSA with a mostly useless background, I'm not exactly sure I'd encourage people to get a liberal arts degree.
Sorry, but I have no idea where you are coming from with that comment. I graduated last year, and everyone one of my friends in LSA (and myself) have come out of college either with high paying jobs or enrollment at a top graduate school. A well-rounded education is more valuable today than it ever has been.
That point of a gift like that isn't so an evil, monocle wearing fat cat can shower money on equally evil/greedy, monocle-wearing future fat cats. This is meant to be a catalyzing investment which creates companies and seeds future industries, which will go a long way toward revitalizing the economy of Michigan and the Detroit area. As a grad I can definitely say that Ross places a lot of emphasis, and may even lead the country in, social entreprenuership and encouraging ventures which create outcomes that benefit more than just shareholder value. I'm not sure what the other $50M is for but even if it builds fancier facilities, attracts notable professors or goes toward scholarships it will still go a long way in helping Ross and Michigan attract the type of entreprenuerial difference makers that Michigan needs. Who's to say that funneling that money to LSA students who "need" it more will produce higher or better social outcomes in the long run?
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In 2007 while I was in the MAcc program at Ross, I had the chance to see Sam Zell speak at the business school about entrepreneurship and share his personal story. I recall him walking into the room with gold bracelets on both wrists plus a pretty heavy looking gold chain necklace--which I found interesting...especially given his emphasis on having liquid wealth.
My friend and I tried to get a word with him after he was done speaking but he literally ran out the door and got into a black Chevy Suburban, which zoomed away just after he got in the car. I wondered why he would be in such a rush to leave. Shortly thereafter, the EOP sale to Blackstone was announced--and it all made sense. What a great call that was to sell at the peak.
Sometimes reading this board/blog makes me proud to be a Michigan alum. I am serious. We all obviously love Michigan football, but its cool that everyone is so informed about other aspects of life as well. And we can argue civilly about things like the demise of print culture, the ethics of people like Zell etc.
Just think how this contrasts with, say, the Paul Finebaum show.
Makin' me look bad with my dumb little donation.
Thank god, now we can keep churning out more Adam Weisses
Zell withdraws donation...donates to the Syracuse bball program.
6 moths later: SU loses $60 million donation.
12 months later: 10 5*s commit to SU.
too soon?
It's great to have billionaires as alums, and we have several.
I wonder when Larry Page, the Google founder, will cast his blessings upon Michigan. Page and his parents went to Michigan, so there is a very strong linkage to the University. Page is supposedly worth about 30 billion.
Page essentially "donated" a Google office in downtown Ann Arbor. I'd love to see him give a gift large enough to name the engineering school, but he has given back in some capacity and created jobs in town.
I remember the Ann Arbor Google office was originally supposed to employ over 1,000 people. It's turned out to be just a couple hundred, mostly working in sales. The whole venture has just been a way for Ann Arbor SPARK to promote themselves as making way more of a difference in the community than the really have.
That I agree with your conclusion.
Google is building a new small campus on property that Martin owns just off Plymouth Road north of the former Pfizer campus. The space will be almost 100% larger than the current downtown building.
http://www.mlive.com/business/ann-arbor/index.ssf/2015/05/google_to_bui…
Larry Page is worth $30 Billion, but he is only 42 years old. I can't imagine a 42 year old guy is coming anywhere close to thinking about cashing out.
At this point, that's just paper wealth.
Zell (Marathon Man edition)
