Philadelphia native Herbert J. Siegel, the billionaire entertainment-industry mogul who enabled the merger of Warner Communications and Time Inc. and sold ten television stations to Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, died on August 5 at 95, writes Sam Roberts for The New York Times.
Siegel was the son of a Philadelphia immigrant overcoat manufacturer who reaped massive profits by combining his talent for deal-making with his love for the film industry.
He was still in college at Lehigh University when he tried to make his first deal. He used money from his father’s trust fund to attempt and buy a 20 percent stake in Philadelphia Eagles for $60,000.
He was not successful in his bid, so instead he went on to purchase an interest in a company that packaged television programs and was owned in part by his father-in-law, an organizer of CBS.
He made dozens of deals over the following decades, but the one that he is best known for is when he made a profit of over $800 million when one of his companies, Chris Craft Industries, settled an acrimonious dispute with Warner Communications.
This allowed Warner and Time to finally merge.
Read more about Herbert Siegel, the billionaire and entertainment industry mogul who enabled the merger of Warner Communications in The New York Times.
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