Marc Rich Death
Marcell passed away on June 26, 2013 at the age of 78 in Lucerne, Switzerland. Marcell's cause of death was stroke.
When did Marc Rich die?
June 26, 2013How did Marc Rich die? What was the cause of death?
StrokeHow old was Marc Rich when died?
78Where did Marc Rich die? What was the location of death?
Lucerne, Switzerland
Marc Rich Birthday and Date of Death
Marc Rich was born on December 18, 1934 and died on June 26, 2013. Marcell was 78 years old at the time of death.
Birthday: December 18, 1934
Date of Death: June 26, 2013
Age at Death: 78
Marc Rich - Biography
Marc Rich (born Marcell David Reich; December 18, 1934 – June 26, 2013) was an international commodities trader, hedge fund manager, financier and businessman. He was best known for founding the commodities company Glencore and for being indicted in the United States on federal charges of tax evasion and making controversial oil deals with Iran during the Iran hostage crisis. He was in Switzerland at the time of the indictment and never returned to the United States. He received a controversial presidential pardon from U.S. President Bill Clinton on January 20, 2001, Clinton's last day in office.Early life, marriage and careerRich was born in 1934 to a Jewish family in Antwerp, Belgium. His parents were working-class Jews who emigrated with their son to the United States in 1941 to escape the Nazis. His father opened a jewelry store in Kansas City, Missouri. The family moved to Queens, New York City in 1950, where Rich's father started a company that imported Bengali jute to make burlap bags. Rich's father later started a business trading agricultural products and helped found the American Bolivian Bank.Rich attended high school at the Rhodes Preparatory School in Manhattan. He later attended New York University, but dropped out after one semester to go work for Philipp Brothers (now known as Phibro LLC) in 1954. He worked as a commodities trader for his father, who sought to build an American manufacturing fortune through burlap-sack production.Rich married Denise Eisenberg, a songwriter and heir to a New England shoe manufacturing fortune, in 1966. They had three children, one of whom, Gabrielle Rich Aouad, died at age 27 of leukemia in 1996. The couple divorced in 1996; she continued to use the name Denise Rich. Six months later he married Gisela Rossi, although that marriage also ended in divorce, in 2005.He worked with Philipp Brothers, a dealer in metals, learning about the international raw materials markets and commercial trading with poor, third-world nations. He helped run the company's operations in Cuba, Bolivia, and Spain. In 1974 he and co-worker Pincus Green set up their own company in Switzerland, Marc Rich + Co. AG, which would later become Glencore Xstrata Plc. Nicknamed "the King of Oil" by his business partners, Rich has been said to have expanded the spot market for crude oil in the early 1970s, drawing business away from the larger established oil companies that had relied on traditional long-term contracts for future purchases. As Andrew Hill of the Financial Times put it, "Rich’s key insight was that oil – and other raw materials – could be traded with less capital, and fewer assets, than the big oil producers thought, if backed by bank finance. It was this highly leveraged business model that became the template for modern traders, including Trafigura, Vitol, and Glencore...."His tutelage under Philipp Brothers afforded Rich the opportunity to develop relationships with various dictatorial régimes and embargoed nations. Rich would later tell biographer Daniel Ammann that he had made his "most important and most profitable" business deals by violating international trade embargoes and doing business with the apartheid regime of South Africa. He also counted Fidel Castro's Cuba, Marxist Angola, the Nicaraguan Sandinistas, Muammar Gaddafi's Libya, Nicolae Ceaușescu's Romania, and Augusto Pinochet's Chile among the clients he serviced. According to Ammann, "he had no regrets whatsoever.... He used to say 'I deliver a service. People want to sell oil to me and other people wanted to buy oil from me. I am a businessman, not a politician."One of his biggest market coups came during the 1973-1974 Arab oil embargo, when he used his Middle Eastern contacts to circumvent the embargo and buy crude oil from Iran and Iraq. After purchasing the crude for roughly US$12 per barrel, Rich doubled the price and sold it to supply-starved U.S. oil companies. Later, following the overthrow of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran, during the Iranian Revolution in 1979, Rich used his special relationship with Ayatollah Khomeini, the leader of the revolution, to buy oil from Iran despite the American embargo. Iran would become Rich's most important supplier of crude oil for more than 15 years. Due to his good relationship with Iran, Rich helped give Mossad’s agents contacts in Iran.His real estate company, Marc Rich Real Estate GmbH, was involved in large developer projects (e.g., in Prague, Czech Republic). Rich and Marvin Davis bought 20th Century Fox in 1981. With Rich a fugitive, Davis sold Rich's interest to Rupert Murdoch for $250 million in March 1984.
