sábado, 28 de febrero de 2015

Charles Bronfman

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Charles Bronfman



Charles Bronfman
BornCharles Rosner Bronfman
June 27, 1931 (age 83)
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
NationalityCanadian / American
Dual citizenship
(February 2013)
Alma materMcGill University
OccupationBusinessman
Philanthropist
Net worthIncrease$2.1 billion (September 2014)[1]
ReligionJudaism
Spouse(s)--Barbara Baerwald
(dates unknown)
--Andrea "Andy" Brett Morrison
(1982-2006; her death)
--Bonita "Bonnie" Roche
(2008-2011)
--Rita Mayo
(2012-present)
Childrenwith Baerwald:
--Stephen Bronfman
--Ellen Bronfman Hauptman
stepchildren:
--Jeremy Cohen
--Pippa Cohen
--Tony Cohen
ParentsSamuel Bronfman
Saidye Rosner Bronfman
RelativesMinda de Gunzberg (sister)
Phyllis Lambert (sister)
Edgar Bronfman, Sr. (brother)
Charles Bronfman, PC CC (born June 27, 1931) is a Canadian / American businessman and philanthropist and is a member of the Canadian JewishBronfman family. With an estimated net worth of $2 billion (as of 2013), Bronfman was ranked by Forbes as the 14th wealthiest Canadian and 736th in the world.[1]

Biography

Bronfman was born in Montreal. He is the son of Samuel Bronfman and Saidye Rosner Bronfman. He has two older sisters, the art patron Baroness Aileen "Minda" Bronfman de Gunzberg, and architecture expert and developerPhyllis Lambert. His older brother, Edgar Bronfman, Sr., was his fellow Co-Chair of Seagrams. Edgar Bronfman, Jr. is Edgar's son. He was educated atSelwyn House School in Montreal, Trinity College School in Port Hope, Ontario, and McGill University. Bronfman said he is Canadian in his heart but wanted to get dual citizenship in order to vote in the United States.[2]

Career

Bronfman held various positions in the family's liquor empire, Seagrams, from 1951 to 2000. Bronfman and his brother, Edgar Bronfman Sr., inherited theSeagram spirits empire in 1971 after the death of their father, Sam Bronfman. Bronfman is a former Co-Chairman of theSeagram Company Ltd. On the demise of the company: “It was a disaster, it is a disaster, it will be a disaster,” he says. “It was a family tragedy.”[2][3]
Bronfman was also well known for his forays into professional sports. He was majority owner of the Montreal Exposfranchise in Major League Baseball from the team's formation in 1968 until 1990. In 1982 Bronfman founded the Montreal Concordes in the Canadian Football League, the Concordes being the successor to the original Montreal Alouettesfranchise that had folded after the 1981 CFL season. This venture proved far less successful - despite later rebranding the team as the Alouettes, the team folded prior to the start of the 1987 CFL season.
From 1986 to the present, he serves as Chairman of The Andrea and Charles Bronfman Philanthropies, Inc.[2] He plans to close the foundation in 2016.[4]
From November 1997 until July 2002, Bronfman was the Chairman of the Board of Koor Industries Ltd., one of Israel's largest investment holding companies. He is the co-chairman of the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada. From 1999 to 2001, Bronfman was the first Chairman of the United Jewish Communities, the merged North American organization comprising United Jewish Appeal, the Council of Jewish Federations and United Israel Appeal.

Philanthropy

He and Michael Steinhardt co-founded Taglit Birthright, a program which provides a free, educational travel experience toIsrael for young Jewish adults. Bronfman is one of its principal donors. Since 1999, the program has sent more than 340,000 young Jews from around the world on a 10-day free trip to Israel.[2]
Bronfman is Chairman of the Andrea and Charles Bronfman Philanthropies Inc., a family of charitable foundations operating in Israel, the U.S., and Canada. Bronfman is also responsible for The Charles Bronfman Prize, honoring individuals for their humanitarian contributions. The first winner was Gift of Life Bone Marrow Foundation founder Jay Feinberg. He also founded the Karev Foundation, which runs educational enrichment classes in outlying areas in collaboration with the Education Ministry in Israel.[5][6]
Bronfman was a founding co-chairman of Historica, producers of the Heritage Minutes series of television shorts. It was at an early meeting of this foundation (originally the CAB Foundation) that he asked the members, "If television can use 30 seconds or 60 seconds to persuade people that Cadillacs or cornflakes are interesting, couldn't we also use that short piece of time to persuade Canadians that their history is interesting? You tell me how to do it, and I'll fund it." It was out of that discussion that the Heritage Minutes were conceived, piloted, distributed through cinemas and broadcasters across the country, and then confirmed as a major contribution of the Foundation — which a few years later became Historica, recently merged with the Dominion Institute.
Bronfman joined the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Giving Pledge, a long-term charitable initiative that aims to inspire conversations about philanthropy and increase charitable giving in the United States.[1][4]

Personal life

Bronfman has been married four times:
  • Barbara Baerwald. Marriage dates unknown. They had two children.[7]
  • Andrea "Andy" Brett Morrison (1945-2006). In 1982, he married Morrison; she died in 2006 after being struck by a taxi when she went out to walk her dog.[10] She has three children from a previous marriage to Canadian manufacturer David Cohen, grandson of Lyon Cohen and cousin of singer Leonard Cohen: Jeremy Cohen, Pippa Cohen, and Tony Cohen.[11]
  • Bonita "Bonnie" Roche. In 2008, married Roche, an architect, in New York City. They divorced in 2011, on amicable terms, celebrating their divorce with a lavish "divorce party."[12]
  • Rita Mayo. In late 2012, married.[2]

Awards and honours

Works or publications[edit]

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Samuel Bronfman

Samuel Bronfman

Samuel Bronfman
Photo of bronfman.jpg
BornFebruary 27, 1889
Soroki, Bessarabia (nowMoldova)
DiedJuly 10, 1971 (aged
 82)
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
OccupationFounder of Distillers Corporation Ltd.
Spouse(s)Saidye Rosner Bronfman
ChildrenAileen Mindel "Minda" Bronfman de Gunzburg
Phyllis Lambert
Edgar Miles Bronfman
Charles Rosner Bronfman
Samuel Bronfman, CC (February 27, 1889 – July 10, 1971) was a Canadianbusiness magnate and philanthropist. He founded Distillers Corporation Limited, and is a member of the Canadian Jewish Bronfman family.

Biography

Samuel Bronfman was born in Soroki, Bessarabia, then part of Imperial Russia, one of eight children of Mindel and Yechiel Bronfman. He and his parents were Jewish refugees of Czarist Russia's anti-Semitic pogroms,[1] who migrated to Wapella, Saskatchewan. They soon moved to Brandon, Manitoba. A wealthy family, they were accompanied by their rabbi and two servants. Soon Yechiel learned that tobacco farming, which had made him a wealthy man in his homeland, was incompatible with the cold Canadian climate of that region. Yechiel was forced to work as a laborer for the Canadian Northern Railway, and after a short time moved to a better job in a sawmill. Yechiel and his sons then started making a good living selling firewood and began a trade in frozen whitefish to earn a winter income. Eventually they turned to trading horses, a venture through which they became involved in the hotel and bar business.[2]
In 1903, the family bought a hotel business, and Samuel, noting that much of the profit was in alcoholic beverages, set up shop as a liquor distributor. He founded the Distillers Corporation in Montreal in 1924, specializing in cheap whiskey, and concurrently taking advantage of the U.S. prohibition on alcoholic beverages. The Bronfmans sold liquor to the northern cities of the U.S. such as Boston, New York and Chicago during the Prohibition era, while operating from the perimeters ofMontreal, Quebec where alcohol production was legal.[3]
On June 21, 1922, Bronfman married Saidye Rosner (1897 - July 7, 1995), with whom he had four children: Aileen Mindel "Minda" Bronfman de Gunzburg (1925–1986), Phyllis Lambert (born January 24, 1927), Edgar Miles Bronfman (June 20, 1929 - December 21, 2013[4]), Charles Rosner Bronfman (born June 27, 1931).

Business career

Bronfman's Distillers Corporation acquired Joseph E. Seagram & Sons of Waterloo, Ontario, from the heirs of Joseph Seagram in 1928. Bronfman eventually built an empire based on the appeal of brand names developed previously by Seagram—including Calvert, Dewars, and Seven Crown—to higher-level consumers. His sales were boosted during the United States' abortive experiment with prohibition, and he was apparently able to do so while staying within the confines of both Canadian law where prohibition laws had been previously repealed and American law.
His renamed company, Seagram Co. Ltd., became an international distributor of alcoholic beverages, and a diversified conglomerate which included an entertainment branch.
Because of changes to US tax law in the Lyndon Johnson administration, it became advantageous for Bronfman to purchase an oil company,[5] which he did with the purchase of Texas Pacific Coal and Oil Company in 1963 for $50 million. In 1980, the Bronfman heirs sold the Texas Pacific Oil holdings to Sun Oil Co. for $2.3 billion.[6]
The Seagram assets have since been acquired by other companies, notably The Coca-Cola Company, Diageo, and Pernod Ricard.

Philanthropy, awards and commemoration

In 1952, he established the Samuel and Sadie Bronfman Family Foundation, one of Canada's major private granting foundations. Bronfman was President of the Canadian Jewish Congress from 1939 to 1962, and he was made a Companion of the Order of Canada in 1967.[7] In 1971, he helped to establish the Bronfman Building at McGill University, which houses the Desautels Faculty of Management. The building was named in his honour as appreciation for his donation to the university. The Bronfman family has continued its support of the university; in 1993 they created the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada, and in 2002 donated the Seagram Building on Sherbrooke St. to McGill.[8]
The Bronfman Archaeology Wing of the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, Israel, is named for Bronfman and his wife.[9]

In fiction

Mordecai Richler's 1989 novel Solomon Gursky Was Here is largely based on the life of Samuel Bronfman.[citation needed]

References

  1. Jump up^ Samuel Bronfman: The Life and Times of Seagram's Mr. Sam (Hardcover, 1992); Author: Michael R. Marrus
  2. Jump up
  3. Jump up^ Daniel Okrent, Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition pp.146-158 (2010; Simon & Schuster) ISBN 
  4. Jump up^ Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy; Jim Marrs; pp. 276-277; ISBN 978-0-88184-648-5
  5. Jump up^ Samuel Bronfman - The Life and Times of Seagram’s Mr. Sam; Michael R. Marrus, published by Brandeis University Press of New England, copyright 1991, ISBN 0-87451-571-8; pages 372-373
  6. Jump up^ Office of the Governor General of Canada. Queen's Printer for Canada. Retrieved 24 May 2010
  7. Jump upFurther reading[edit]
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