Eli M. Black
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Eli M. Black (1922?–February 3, 1975) was an American businessman who controlled the United Brands Company.
Born Elihu Menashe Blachowitz in Poland, he came to America as a child. He was a rabbi, but left the synagogue after three and a half years to enter business. He was 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 was not a successful acquisition because the company had far less cash than Black thought. Black was not a good manager, and his company became crippled with debt. The company's losses were exacerbated by Hurricane Fifi in 1974 that destroyed its banana plantations in Honduras.
For years rumors circulated about United Fruit's nefarious activities. Then, in 1975 the Securities and Exchange Commission uncovered a $2.5 million bribe the company had agreed to pay a Honduran official in return for reducing his country's banana tax. At the time, corporate raider Eli Black led the company. But when the bribery scandal surfaced, Black was no longer in control. A few weeks earlier on February 3, 1975, he committed suicide—he 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. He was 53.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission exposed a scheme by United Brands to bribe Honduran President Oswaldo López Arellano with $1.25 million, with the promise of another $1.25 million upon the reduction of certain export taxes. Trading in United Brands stock was halted, and Lopez was ousted in a military coup.
After Black's spectacular suicide, Cincinnati-based American Financial, one of millionaire Carl H. Lindner, Jr.'s companies, bought into United Fruit.
Black's suicide was the inspiration for a notable scene in the 1994 screwball comedy film The Hudsucker Proxy.
References
- "Eli Black's Rites Attended by 500." The New York Times. February 6, 1975.
- Peter Kihss. "44 Story Plunge Kills Head of United Brands." The New York Times. February 4, 1975.
- Peter T. Kilborn. "Suicide of Big Executive: Stress of Corporate Life". The New York Times. February 14, 1975.
- Thomas P. McCann. On the Inside. Beverley, Massachusetts: Quinlan Press, 1987.
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