A. Alfred Taubman

Adolph Alfred Taubman (born 1924)Taubman, A. Alfred. [http://www.harpercollins.com/books/9780061235375/Threshold_Resistance/excerpt.aspx Chapter One: "From Pontiac to Ann Arbor"] excerpt from "Threshold Resistance: The Extraordinary Career of a Luxury Retailing Pioneer" - HarperCollins Publishers] is an American real estate developer, industrialist, and philanthropist from Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, a Metro Detroit area suburb. He became rich developing shopping malls, and his company is Taubman Centers Inc. He is the author of "Threshold Resistance: The Extraordinary Career of a Luxury Retailing Pioneer" (HarperCollins, April 2007), a New York Times Best Seller.

Biography

Born at 300 Ottawa Drive in Pontiac, Michigan, to German Jewish immigrants Philip and Fannie Taubman, who came to the United States from Bialystok, in northeastern Poland. His mother was his father's second cousin. Philip took a job with the Wilson Foundry Company in Davenport, Iowa, and then he was transferred to Pontiac in 1920. He left Wilson and started some fruit farms in nearby towns like Rochester and Orion, then began developing commercial real estate projects and custom homes.

He has been on the list of Forbes 400 Richest Americans for two decades. He studied architecture at the University of Michigan and Lawrence Technological University, but graduated from neither. He and his wife, Judith Mazor (the 1962 Miss Israel), are Jewish. [ [http://www.forbes.com/finance/lists/54/2001/LIR.jhtml?passListId=54&passYear=2001&passListType=Person&uniqueId=LWZ4&datatype=Person "#340, Taubman, A Alfred"] Forbes 2001 400 Richest Americans] [ [http://www.forbes.com/lists/2006/54/biz_06rich400_A-Alfred-Taubman_LWZ4.html "#278, Taubman, A Alfred"] Forbes 2006 400 Richest Americans - 09.21.06]

He bought the famous Sotheby's auction house in 1983, acting as a "white knight" when the company was threatened by a hostile and unwanted takeover by Marshall Cogan and Steven Swid of General Felt. [ [http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,953958,00.html "White Knight"] - Time Magazine - Monday, Jun. 27, 1983] [Rohleder, Anna. [http://www.forbes.com/2001/11/14/1114timeline.html "Time Line: The Rise Of Christie's And Sotheby's"] - Forbes Magazine.com] At the time he was also the owner of A&W Restaurants, which he had purchased in 1982. [http://www.awrootbeer.com/hist_hist3.htm History] @ A&W Rootbeer] He later said, "There is more similarity in a precious painting by Degas and a frosted mug of root beer than you ever thought possible." [ [http://www.bartleby.com/63/35/2235.html Taubman] @ Bartleby.com] He sold A&W to Sagittarius Acquisitions in December of 1994.

From 1983 to 1984, Taubman was the majority owner of the Michigan Panthers of the United States Football League. Although the Panthers acquired a fairly loyal following, the USFL's decision to move from the spring to the fall led Taubman to merge his team with the Oakland Invaders for the 1985 season, with himself as part-owner of the Invaders. That team folded along with the rest of the USFL after the 1985 season.

He revived the fortunes of Sotheby's, which had been slumping in the eighties, and he took the company public in 1988. He was fined $7.5 million and imprisoned for a year in 2002 for violating anti-trust laws (for conspiracy to fix commissions with rival Christie's). [Rohleder, Anna. [http://www.forbes.com/2001/11/14/1114players.html#taubman "Who's Who In The Sotheby's Price-Fixing Trial"] - Forbes Magazine.com] [ [http://money.cnn.com/2002/04/22/news/taubman/index.htm "Ex-Sotheby's chairman sentenced"] @ CNNMoney Magazine - April 22, 2002] Allegedly, Taubman initiated the conspiracy in 1993 with then-Christies executive Anthony Tenant. When the investigations began, Christie's executives offered to cooperate, eventually implicating Taubman. In December 2001, a New York jury convicted Taubman of fixing art prices. [ [http://archives.cnn.com/2001/LAW/12/05/sothebys/ "Ex-Sotheby's chair convicted on price fixing charges"] - CNN.com - December 5, 2001] [ [http://edition.cnn.com/2001/BUSINESS/12/05/sothebys/ "Ex-Sotheby's boss convicted"] - CNN.com-Europe - December 5, 2001] The board then discussed a sale of the company. [ [http://cnnstudentnews.cnn.com/2001/BUSINESS/12/12/sothebys.re/ "Sotheby's board urges sale"] @ CNN.com-Europe - December 12, 2001] Taubman was released to a halfway house after serving 9-1/2 months in Federal prison in 2003. [Runk, David. [http://www.boston.com/business/articles/2007/04/08/taubman_talks_about_trial_in_memoir?mode=PF "Taubman sheds light on Sotheby's scandal"] - Associated Press (c/o boston.com / The Boston Globe) - April 8, 2007]

In October 2003, his real estate company survived a hostile takeover bid by the Simon Property Group and Westfield America. His family divested controlling interest in Sotheby's by September 2005. [ [http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F40613FD3D5B0C7A8CDDA90994DB404482&n=Top%2fReference%2fTimes%20Topics%2fPeople%2fT%2fTaubman%2c%20A%2e%20Alfred A. Alfred Taubman] @ the New York Times] [Murphy, Tara. [http://www.forbes.com/2003/01/15/cx_tm_0115video2.html "Taubman Bid Gets Sweeter"] Forbes.com - 01.15.03]

He has developed a reputation as a philanthropist. At the University of Michigan, the Taubman Medical Library, Taubman Health Care Center and Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning are named after him. The university elected to retain Taubman's gifts and his name after considerable deliberation and review. Taubman is also a major sponsor of disease-research: his latest donation, a gift of $5 million to support University of Michigan's Dr. Eva Feldman's and Dr. Yehoash Raphael's research, was aimed at the development of new treatments for Lou Gehrig's Disease and deafness, respectively. [Gavin, Kara. [http://www.med.umich.edu/opm/newspage/2007/alsgrant.htm "Attacking Lou Gehrig’s disease from all angles: $5M gift from A. Alfred Taubman will support U-M research"] University of Michigan Health System - May 23, 2007]

He also contributed money to the Taubman Center for Public Policy at Brown University, and The Taubman Center for State and Local Government at Harvard University. The A. Alfred Taubman Student Services Center at Lawrence Technological University was completed in 2006. [ [http://www.ltu.edu/taubmancenter/index.asp A. Alfred Taubman Student Services Center] @ Lawrence Technological University - Southfield, Michigan]

ee also

*Woodward & Lothrop
*May Department Stores
*Wanamaker's
*Michigan Panthers
*François Pinault

Trivia

Actress Sigourney Weaver took an interest in the Sotheby's-Christie's story while the trial was under way and an HBO film version of the story was under consideration in 2002. It appeared to fall through because the key informant, Diana Brooks, refused to speak with the star. [ [http://www.imdb.com/news/wenn/2002-02-26#celeb7 World Entertainment News Network - Movie/TV News] @ IMDb - 26 February 2002] [ [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/1694100.stm "History of a conspiracy"] @ BBC News - Wednesday, 5 December, 2001]

Further reading

* Mason, Christopher. "The Art of the Steal: Inside the Sotheby's-Christie's Auction House Scandal." New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons. 2004. ISBN 0399150935
* Taubman, A. Alfred. "Threshold Resistance: The Extraordinary Career of a Luxury Retailing Pioneer." New York: Collins. 2007 ISBN 978-0061235375

References

External links

* [http://www.slate.com/id/2079270/ 2003 "Slate" article, "Mall Rats: How Alfred Taubman's real estate company is shortchanging its shareholders"]
* [http://en.thinkexist.com/quotes/a._alfred_taubman/ Taubman quotes]
* [http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/may/2/newsid_2480000/2480711.stm BBC video report on 2001 scandal]
* [http://www.bulbach.com/forum/readings/sothebys-3.htm Additional readings on the scandal from Stanley Bulbach]