Taubman’s company built and operated more than 25 U.S. malls, including the Mall at Short Hills in New Jersey and the Beverly Center in Los Angeles.
Maintaining Innocence
Forbes Magazine ranked Taubman No. 577 on its 2015 list of the world’s billionaires, with an estimated net worth of $3.1 billion.
Taubman purchased Sotheby’s in 1983. After taking the company public in London in 1987 and in New York the next year, he became Sotheby’s chairman, placing friends and aristocrats on its board.
In 2001, a jury in Manhattan federal court found Taubman guilty of collaborating with Christie’s to fix fees, violating antitrust laws and cheating customers out of about $100 million. He spent 10 months in prison and resigned as chairman of Sotheby’s and of Bloomfield Hills, Michigan-based Taubman Centers.
Taubman always maintained he broke no laws and took an unfair fall.
“I had served time for others, people going about their lives in New York and London who had initiated, executed and lied about a serious crime for which they would receive little or no punishment,” he wrote in a 2007 memoir.
Taubman gave $250 million to causes including the arts, education and medicine. Proceeds from Sotheby’s sales will be used to settle estate tax obligations and fund the A. Alfred Taubman Foundation, Sotheby’s said.