Billionaire Robert Pritzker, one of America’s wealthiest men and a member of the Chicago-based Pritzker family business empire, died Oct. 27 at 85.
Pritzker built the Marmon group, a conglomerate of manufacturing and industrial service companies sold to Warren Buffett in 2008 for $7 billion, and he and his family’s holdings have included the Hyatt hotel chain, Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines, banks, tobacco companies and other businesses. Many of Marmon’s companies produced low-profile but profitable products such as railroad tank cars, highway equipment, piping, cables and medical devices, the New York Times wrote.
In total, the Pritzker family’s fortune has been estimated to be the fifth largest in the United States at more than $19 billion, according to Forbes, but family rifts that have been fought publicly in courts for the last decade have been dividing the clan’s wealth, businesses, philanthropic efforts and political clout among 11 adult cousins, some of them Pritzker’s children.
Two of his children, Liesel and Matthew, filed a lawsuit alleging that Pritzker and other family members had taken money from their trust funds and did not consult them. The case was settled in 2005, at which time Pritzker said in a statement that he had acted properly.
“I love them very much and it’s sad they feel they were wronged,” Pritzker said of his children. — jta