Everything about Eli M Black totally explained
Eli M. Black (
April 9,
1921–
February 3,
1975) was a Jewish-American businessman who controlled the
United Brands Company.
Born Elihu Menashe Blachowitz in
Poland, he came to America as a child. He was trained as a
rabbi, and served a congregation in
Woodmere, New York, but left the pulpit after three-and-a -half years to enter business. He became a successful
investment banker, and in
1954 he was named president of the
American Seal-Kap Company.
American Seal-Kap made the plastic liners in bottle caps, but Black turned it into a vehicle for acquisitions. He renamed the company AMK after its ticker symbol and jumped on the
conglomerate bandwagon of the
1960s. Among his acquisitions was the
John Morrell meatpacking company. In
1969 he took over
United Fruit Company and renamed his company United Brands.
United Fruit had far less cash than Black had believed when he acquired it. Black wasn't a good manager, and United Brands soon became crippled with debt. The company's losses were exacerbated by
Hurricane Fifi in
1974, which destroyed many of its
banana plantations in
Honduras.
In 1975, the
Securities and Exchange Commission uncovered a $2.5 million
bribe that the company had agreed to pay Honduran president
Oswaldo López Arellano in return for reducing taxes on banana exports. A few weeks before the scandal broke, Black went to his office on the forty-fourth floor of the
Pan Am Building in
Manhattan, bashed out the window with his briefcase, and jumped to his death on
Park Avenue.
After Black's spectacular suicide,
Cincinnati-based
American Financial, one of millionaire
Carl Lindner, Jr.'s companies, bought into United Fruit.
Black's suicide was the inspiration for a scene in the
1994 screwball comedy film The Hudsucker Proxy.
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