Eli Broad, the billionaire businessman who founded two Fortune 500 companies in different industries before becoming one of America’s most prominent philanthropists and art collectors, has died. He was 87.
Broad died Friday afternoon at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles following a long illness, said Suzi Emmerling, a spokeswoman for the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation.
Kaufman & Broad, now called KB Home, was the first homebuilder to trade on the New York Stock Exchange. Broad later acquired a life insurer that he renamed SunAmerica, turning it into one of the largest U.S. annuity providers. He agreed to sell it to New York-based American International Group Inc. in 1998 for about $18 billion.
By targeting two postwar megatrends -- the need for housing and for retirement planning -- Broad built a fortune of more than $7 billion from the two companies, both based in Los Angeles. Pledging to give away much of his wealth, he donated more than $2 billion to the arts, education and medical research as part of his venture philanthropy: return-based investing in charitable causes.
More than a dozen institutions across the U.S. bear his name or imprint, including the Broad Institute for biomedical research in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the Eli Broad College of Business at Michigan State University, in East Lansing, Michigan, where he received a bachelor’s degree in 1954.
‘Role Model’
“Eli Broad sets the standard,” Michael Bloomberg, the founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP and former mayor of New York City, said in a “60 Minutes” interview in 2011. “I think it’s really being a role model for others. They look at Eli and because of him, they get the ideas, ‘I’m going to be innovative and be philanthropic and do some other things.’ The leverage of Eli Broad is really quite amazing.”
My statement on the passing of Eli Broad: https://t.co/qlGQQRl5uw pic.twitter.com/I0Q4uv8j7p
— Mike Bloomberg (@MikeBloomberg) May 1, 2021
Broad had an art collection that included more than 2,000 works of at least 200 artists, including Jeff Koons, Cindy Sherman and Cy Twombly. He was a co-founder and backer of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. The Broad Art Foundation, also based in Los Angeles, lends art to museums around the world.
The Broad, a $140 million museum in downtown Los Angeles that opened in 2015 houses his contemporary art collection, valued at more than $2 billion.
“My goals were unrealistic, my deadlines couldn’t be met, my ideas were far-fetched, or my approach trampled on conventional wisdom,” Broad wrote in “The Art of Being Unreasonable,” his 2012 autobiography. “I believe being unreasonable has been the key to my success.”
Bronx Upbringing
Born on June 6, 1933, in the Bronx, New York, Broad was the only child of Rita and Leon Broad, Jewish immigrants from Lithuania. He grew up in Detroit where his father ran a five-and-dime store. His mother was a dressmaker.
He became a certified public accountant at age 20 and taught at night school before founding Kaufman & Broad in 1956 with Donald Kaufman, who was married to a cousin of Broad’s wife Edythe.