Sam Zell, real estate mogul and Covanta chairman, dies at 81

Sam Zell, a Chicago real estate mogul and chairman of Morristown, New Jersey-based Covanta, died May 18. He was 81.

Zell died at home due to complications from a recent illness, according to Equity Group Investments, a company he founded in 1968.

As reported by the Associated Press, Zell had a golden touch with real estate and got his start managing apartment buildings as a college student. By the time he reached his 70s, he had amassed a fortune estimated at $3.8 billion.

Zell sold Equity Office, the office-tower company he spent three decades building, to Blackstone Group for $39 billion in 2007. It was the largest private equity transaction in history, and Zell personally netted $1 billion.

A month later, he made another deal that would ultimately tarnish his image: the acquisition of the ailing Tribune Co. for $13 billion. The media giant filed for bankruptcy the following year.

Real estate was his trademark, but as he noted in an interview shortly before making the ill-fated Tribune deal, it represented only about 25 percent of his holdings.

“I’m a professional opportunist,” Zell told the Associated Press at the time. “I’m pretty sure that no matter what topic you pick, we’re involved in some way or another.”

Zell was born in Highland Park, Illinois, on Sept. 28, 1941, four months after his immigrant parents arrived in the U.S.

“Sam Zell was a self-made, visionary entrepreneur. He launched and grew hundreds of companies during his 60-plus-year career and created countless jobs. Although his investments spanned industries across the globe, he was most widely recognized for his critical role in creating the modern real estate investment trust, which today is a more than $4 trillion industry,” Equity Group Investments said in a written statement announcing Zell’s death.

Zell is survived by his wife, Helen; his sister Julie Baskes and her husband, Roger Baskes; his sister Leah Zell; his three children, Kellie Zell and son-in-law Scott Peppet, Matthew Zell and JoAnn Zell; and his nine grandchildren.