CHICAGO–(BUSINESS WIRE) — It is with profound sadness
that Equity Residential (NYSE: EQR) mourns the death of its
Founder and Chairman, Samuel Zell, who died today at age 81.
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By Allison Morrow, CNN Updated 12:38 PM EDT, Thu May 18, 2023 Sam Zell, the Chicago real-estate magnate whose knack for buying up distressed assets turned him into a billionaire and earned him the nickname “grave dancer,” died on Thursday, his company said. He was 81. Equity Residential, the company he founded decades ago, did not provide a cause of death but described Zell as an “iconic figure in real estate and throughout the corporate world.” Among his wide-ranging portfolio of investments were distressed assets in real estate and in media, including an ultimately disastrous bet on the Tribune Company. Zell had a personal net worth of $5.9 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Zell had a penchant for scooping up cheap real estate and selling it later at a profit, a strategy he outlined in a 1978 article titled “The Grave Dancer,” which became his nickname in the industry. “I was dancing on the skeletons of other people’s mistakes,” he wrote. |