Louis Wolfson

Louis Elwood Wolfson (January 28, 1912 – December 30, 2007) was an American financier, a convicted felon, and one of the first modern corporate raiders, labeled by Time as such in a 1956 article.

A self-made millionaire by 28, Wolfson is credited with creating the modern hostile tender offer, which laid the technical framework to the leveraged buyout.

Louis's father, Morris David Wolfson, began the philanthropy with a gift of $500,000 in 1946 to create Wolfson Children's Hospital.

Other gifts included the Wolfson Student Center at Jacksonville University, the River Garden/Wolfson Health and Aging Center and the Louis E. Wolfson Wellness Center at Baptist Medical Center Downtown.

Louis Wolfson worked to honor the memory of his older brother, Sam.

In 1949, Wolfson purchased the Capital Transit Company from the North American Company for $2 million.

Capital Transit held the streetcar and bus service franchise for Washington, D.C.; it had been managed conservatively and beyond its physical assets had a $7 million cash reserve.

When the company disbursed $3 million in dividends to shareholders, the government revoked Capital Transit's right to operate, and Wolfson sold his shares for $13.5 million.

A 1951 takeover of Merritt-Chapman & Scott made Wolfson Chairman and CEO of the marine construction and salvage firm, but Wolfson expanded the company into shipbuilding, chemicals, and money lending, becoming one of the first conglomerates.

The corporation won numerous multimillion-dollar contracts for high-profile projects, including the Glen Canyon Dam in Arizona, the United States Navy supercarrier Kitty Hawk and the Mackinac Bridge that linked Michigan's lower and upper peninsulas.

Wolfson became nationally known in 1955, when he unsuccessfully attempted a hostile takeover of Montgomery Ward and Co.

His Universal Marion Co. owned the Miami Beach Sun and the Jacksonville Chronicle newspapers and made movies through a subsidiary.

The firm co-financed the production of Mel Brooks' first movie, The Producers, which won an Oscar and later became a major Broadway play.

The building now known as the JEA Tower in Jacksonville was called the Universal-Marion Building when the firm was the largest tenant.

At its peak, his industrial and commercial empire had total assets estimated at a quarter of a billion dollars.

In 1957, the United States Securities and Exchange Commission ordered a ten-day suspension of trading in stock in a company Wolfson held "To prevent fraudulent and manipulative practices".

In November 1957, Louis Wolfson sold a trailer company controlled by one of his interests to Detroit's Trans Continental Industries.

His longtime friend, David Charnay, was chairman prior to Charnay's purchase and global modernization of Four Star International.

The trailer company became Trans Continental's chief asset.

Upon reviewing the sale from Louis Wolfson to David Charnay, the Securities and Exchange Commission ordered a ten-day suspension of trading in Trans Continental stock on the American and Detroit stock exchanges, based upon a conjectured and speculative reason: "To prevent fraudulent and manipulative practices".

Wolfson started a charitable foundation, which in 1966 paid Supreme Court Justice and Wolfson friend Abe Fortas a $20,000 lifetime annual retainer for unspecified consultation.

Researchers suspect this sum may have represented an attempted bribery to secure Fortas's assistance with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Wolfson had appealed his conviction all the way to the Supreme Court.

Although the Supreme Court had refused to review his conviction and Fortas did not participate in that decision, it was viewed as an attempt to buy his way out of a conviction.

In 1967, he was convicted of selling unregistered shares and obstruction of justice, for which he served nine months in a federal prison.

The conviction eventually led to a scandal involving Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas, who resigned in 1969 after returning a $20,000 retainer to a Wolfson foundation.

In 1971, Wolfson was involved in a contentious legal battle with radio host Larry King over monies Wolfson supplied and King allegedly pocketed.

Later King claimed Wolfson paid him $48,500 to influence President Richard Nixon's incoming U.S. Attorney General, John N. Mitchell, into reviewing Wolfson's past conviction.

Wolfson was born in St. Louis, Missouri, but his family moved to Jacksonville, Florida, when he was one year old.

The child of Jewish immigrants from Lithuania, Wolfson and his seven siblings grew up in Jacksonville, where his father was a junk man/scrap metal dealer.

In his teens, he boxed professionally under the name "Kid Wolf", earning from $25 to $100 per fight.

Wolfson was an outstanding athlete and an All-Southern end for Jacksonville's Andrew Jackson High School, who went to the University of Georgia to play football.

He left the university after two years, never graduating.

After dropping out of college, he raised $10,000 to start in business: half from a wealthy Georgia football fan, Harold Hirsch, and half from his family.

He started the Florida Pipe and Supply Company to trade in building materials.

Within a few years, he built this into a successful large business and was a millionaire at age 28.

In later years, he was a major thoroughbred horse racing participant best known as the owner and breeder of 1978 American Triple Crown winner, Affirmed.

Wolfson was frequently in trouble with the law.

As chairman of the Wolfson Family Foundation for 35 years until the late 1980s, Wolfson directed much of the foundation's gifts to Jacksonville, Florida's medical, educational, research and religious charitable entities.

The Duval County School Board named Samuel W. Wolfson High School after his brother and the Wolfson family funded construction of Sam W. Wolfson Baseball Park, the minor-league baseball facility in Jacksonville for decades until the Baseball Grounds of Jacksonville was built in 2002-3.