Eli Broad, billionaire entrepreneur who reshaped LA, dies

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Eli Broad, the billionaire, philanthropist, contemporary art collector and entrepreneur who co-founded housing pioneer Kaufman and Broad Inc. and founded financial services giant SunAmerica Inc., died on Friday in Los Angeles. He was 87 years old.

Suzi Emmerling, a spokeswoman for the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation, confirmed his death for The Associated Press. Emmerling said Broad died at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center after a long illness. No services were announced.

The New York Times first reported his death.

"As a businessman Eli saw around the corner, as a philanthropist he saw the problems in the world and tried to fix them, as a citizen he saw the opportunity in our common community and as a husband, father and friend he saw the potential in each of us" said Gerun Riley, president of the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation, in a statement Friday.

It was Broad (pronounced brohd) who provided much of the money and willpower to transform the once dying downtown Los Angeles into a thriving area of ​​expensive lofts, chic restaurants, and civic structures like the Walt Disney Concert Hall . In 2015 he opened his own contemporary art museum of the same name and an art rental library, Broad, in the city center next to Disney Hall.

"Eli Broad was simply the most influential private citizen of his generation in LA," said Eric Garcetti, Los Angeles Mayor, on Twitter. "He loved this city as much as anyone I have ever known."

As a young accountant in the 1950s, Broad saw opportunities in the booming real estate market. He quit his job and worked with developer Donald Kaufman. He began building starter houses for first-time buyers who wanted to claim their piece of the American dream. The company eventually became KB Home, one of the country's most successful property developers.

Almost 30 years later, Broad saw the opportunity again and transformed the company's insurance arm into a retirement conglomerate that served the financial needs of aging baby boomers.

Broad became one of the richest men in the country. Forbes magazine estimated its financial fortune at $ 6.9 billion on Friday.

He also gained a reputation for being a dedicated, die-hard dealmaker.

"If you play it safe all the time, you won't get very far," Broad told Investor's Business Daily in 2005.

Outside of work, Broad used his wealth and status to run community, education, science, and culture projects, particularly in Los Angeles. The native New Yorker had moved to the city's Tony Brentwood division in 1963. His charitable foundations donated millions to such projects, particularly projects to improve public education, and established foundations at several universities across the country.

In the 1990s, Broad led the campaign to raise money for the construction of the Frank Gehry-designed Walt Disney Concert Hall and was, among other things, a major underwriter of the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art. Broad has been an avid art dog since the 1960s and had a collection in 2003 valued at $ 500 million.

In 1984 he founded the Broad Art Foundation to make works from his collection available to the public.

A decade later, he bought Roy Lichtenstein's "I ... Sorry," for $ 2.5 million at a credit card auction, and donated the more than 2 million frequent flyer points he had collected for California Institute students to art. With his money, the Los Angeles County Art Museum opened its new Broad Contemporary Art Museum in 2008 with works from Broad's collection.

Broad also exercised considerable political muscle. As a Democrat, he led the drive to attract the party's national convention to Los Angeles in 2000. He split from his party at times, however, particularly in 1972 when, disaffected by Senator George McGovern's campaign, he served as Democratic co-chair for Nixon.

Years after Nixon was disgraced, Broad told Los Angeles Magazine that his efforts on Nixon's behalf were "something I hate to admit." But it wasn't the last time he supported a Republican. He also supported his close friend, former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan, with whom he shared a common vision of public school reform.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, California, praised Broad and his wife Edythe for their philanthropic efforts.

"Your leadership to support our schools, advance scientific and medical research, and ensure everyone has access to the arts leaves a lasting and remarkable legacy," Pelosi said in a statement. "Our entire nation is particularly indebted to the Broads for their commitment to supporting the arts that they knew were an essential, unifying force in the world."

Broad was born on June 6, 1933 in New York City to Lithuanian immigrants and grew up in Detroit. His father was a house painter and small business owner.

Broad received his bachelor's degree from Michigan State University in 1954. In 1991 he founded the university's Eli Broad College of Business and the Eli Broad Graduate School of Management.

He passed Michigan's auditing exam at the age of 20 and became the youngest person to do so at the time. The following year he married his hometown sweetheart, Edythe. The couple had two sons, Jeffrey and Gary. His wife and sons survive him, according to the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation.

Eager to leave school and start his career, Broad began working for several clients, including Kaufman. Soon Broad took note of the real estate market and began studying the area, reading trade magazines, and using his accounting expertise to analyze the business. Gradually he became convinced that money could be made.

In 1957, at the age of 23, he went into business with Kaufman selling houses in the Detroit suburbs. The first homes sold for about $ 12,000, about 10 percent less than the competition since they were built without the usual basements and in about half the time.

Kaufman and Broad approached west, first to Arizona, then California. They moved the company's corporate headquarters to Los Angeles in 1963, two years after it became the first company to go public.

In 1971, Broad bought an insurance company to hedge against the boom and bust cycles of the real estate market. As before he got into real estate, Broad began researching the insurance market and saw better business in financial planning for retirees. He began shifting the subsidiary's focus to selling annuities and other retirement products.

The company was renamed SunAmerica in 1989, with Broad as chairman and chief executive officer. In 1998, New York-based American International Group acquired SunAmerica for $ 16.5 billion.

Two years later, Broad resigned as chief but retained the title of chairman.

"I will do the things that I enjoy and that I could have the most value with instead of the everyday things," Broad told The Associated Press at the time. "I like to work. Right now I work probably 80 hours a week. ... I still see myself close to 40 hours at SunAmerica / AIG and maybe 40 hours at other things."

In recent years, Broad has spent much of his time philanthropically through his foundations, advocating public education reform, and promoting the rebirth of downtown Los Angeles as a commercial, residential, and other center.

In 1999, the Broads established the Broad Education Foundation with the aim of improving urban public education. The foundation has allocated more than $ 500 million to the cause in the first five years.

Taking a CEO approach, Broad believed that troubled schools could often be vastly improved if they were better managed by their principals.

"These are huge corporations," Broad said in a 2003 interview with Forbes magazine about urban school districts. You start at the top. "

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The associated press writer Stefanie Dazio contributed to this.

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