Herbert Siegel, 95; investor in big media deals
Herbert J. Siegel, a maverick investor who became a billionaire entertainment-industry mogul most notable for finally enabling the merger of Warner Communications and Time Inc. in 1989 and for selling 10 television stations to Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. in 2000, died Saturday at his home in the New York City borough of Manhattan. He was 95.
His wife, Jeanne, said the cause was heart failure.
Mr. Siegel, the gregarious son of an immigrant garment manufacturer, combined his boyhood passions — deal-making and an infatuation with the film industry — to reap massive profits.
Humorist Art Buchwald once said that Mr. Siegel deserved an Academy Award for having earned the most money in Hollywood without ever making a movie.
Mr. Siegel got started young: He was still in college when, flush with a trust fund from his father, he sought to purchase a 20 percent stake in the Philadelphia Eagles of the NFL for $60,000. His bid was unsuccessful, so, instead, he bought an interest in a company that packaged television programs and that was partly owned by his father-in-law, an organizer of the Columbia Broadcasting System.
After buying a brewery, a car-wax company, and a jukebox manufacturer, he further insinuated himself into the entertainment business in 1962 by buying General Artists Corp., an agency that represented Pat Boone, Perry Como, and Jackie Gleason.
In 1965, after building a base at the Baldwin-Montrose Chemical Co., he netted $2.5 million from a failed bid for Paramount Pictures, then acquired the boat maker Chris-Craft Industries, where he served as chair. His goal was to buy undervalued companies, funnel their earnings to Chris-Craft’s income statement, and sell these investments for a capital gain.
“At 28, I was the youngest chairman of a company on the American Stock Exchange,” he told The New York Times in 1984.
He sold off Chris-Craft’s boat-making business and charmed Wall Street, despite losses at the company’s chemical division, the largest manufacturer of the insecticide DDT, and its television division.
He lost an eight-year bid to acquire Piper Aircraft, but in 1980 he sold his stake in 20th Century Fox, which he had begun accumulating two years earlier, for $74 million, collecting a profit of more than $800 million once Chris Craft Industries settled an acrimonious dispute that enabled Warner to merge with Time.
He had sought to buy Warner in 1968, then stepped in as movie mogul Steven Ross’ white knight in the early 1980s, investing in a 21 percent stake in the company to fend off a takeover by Murdoch.
But their partnership soured after Mr. Siegel became vexed by Warner’s extravagant corporate culture and invoked an earlier agreement between Warner and Chris-Craft that delayed the Time-Warner merger until 1989.
Chris-Craft’s stock soared as a result of the deal, and the company collected about $1 billion.
In 2000, Mr. Siegel reaped a windfall from the sale of 10 television stations to Murdoch’s News Corp. for $5.3 billion in cash and stock — a blockbuster deal that government filings estimated generated more than $1 billion for Mr. Siegel, although his family said he actually netted around half that amount. The sale provided News Corp. with valuable TV outlets in New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco.
In 2007, he married Jeanne Sorenson. In addition to her, his survivors include two sons from his first marriage, John and William, and two grandchildren.