Ron Bloom

Ron Bloom (born 1955) is an American economic advisor who served as a senior official in the Obama Administration from February 2009 to August 2011.

After graduating from Wesleyan University in 1977, the younger Bloom went to work first for the Jewish Labor Committee and a year later for the Service Employees International Union.

After a time, however, he realized that labor unions suffered from a lack of business knowledge, so he enrolled at Harvard Business School, earning an MBA with Distinction in 1985.

Upon graduation from HBS, Bloom joined the investment banking firm of Lazard Frères & Co. At Lazard, he divided his time between mergers and acquisition, the firm's principal business, and working with unions whose members were involved in corporate bankruptcies and restructuring transactions, a practice originated by Lazard partner Eugene Keilin.

Many of the employee-related transactions involved the steel industry—whose hourly employees were represented by the United Steelworkers (USW)—and the airline industry, where Lazard represented pilots who were members of the Airline Pilots Association (ALPA).

In 1990, Bloom joined Keilin to create their own investment banking firm, Keilin and Bloom, which specialized in representing unions and other employee groups in turnaround and restructuring situations.

Representing the USW in the Canadian bankruptcy of Algoma Steel, Bloom avoided a liquidation of the company and succeeded in obtaining majority ownership for the employees in the reorganized company.

Continuing a project they began together at Lazard, Keilin and Bloom also represented the ALPA pilots at United Airlines in their attempts to acquire ownership of the company through an employee stock ownership plan.

In 1993, the American Alliance of Museums presented him with its Award for Distinguished Service to Museums; and in 2002, the Franklin dedicated its renovated observatory as the Joel N. Bloom Observatory.

In 1994, they succeeded in obtaining a majority stake in United for the ESOP, creating one of the largest employee-owned companies in the United States.

From 1996 to 2008, Bloom served as special assistant to the president of the United Steelworkers.

Bloom also worked for the investment banking firm Lazard on two occasions, the second as Vice Chairman, U.S Investment Banking.

Bloom is the vice chair and a managing partner of Brookfield Asset Management and served as chairman of the Board of Governors of the United States Postal Service.

Ron Bloom was born to a Jewish family in New York City and raised in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania.

His mother, Paula Yackira, was an educator, and his father, Joel Bloom, served 21 years as President of the Franklin Institute Science Museum.

The elder Bloom was a prime mover in the conception and development of the Mandell Futures Center, a 90000 sqft wing that transformed the institute “from a dusty bin of outmoded exhibits into what is probably the most advanced science museum in the world.” A co-author of the influential ‘’Museums for a New Century: A Report of the Commission on Museums for a New Century’’, he was a president of the American Alliance of Museums (the first science museum president to serve in that capacity), chairman of the U.S. National Committee of the International Council of Museums, and founding president of the Association of Science-Technology Centers.

In 1996, Bloom left the firm to become Special Assistant to George Becker, the President of the USW.

His duties included helping the union affect corporate business restructuring, investments, bankruptcies and mergers.

In his time with the Steelworkers, he reinforced his reputation as both a fierce negotiator and a creative problem solver, helping shepherd the steel industry through a painful transition period.

Bloom's work on behalf of the Steelworkers has been documented by major news publications, including the Wall Street Journal and BusinessWeek.

Three examples of transactions in which he played a major role are described briefly below.

In April 2002 and February 2003 respectively, Bloom facilitated the sale of the assets of LTV Steel and Bethlehem Steel to the International Steel Group (ISG).

Led by the financier Wilbur L. Ross Jr., ISG sought to acquire the assets of LTV and Bethlehem out of bankruptcies without having to assume expensive obligations to former workers.

Bloom negotiated a Voluntary Employee Beneficiary Association (VEBA) that would finance health care for retirees using a portion of ISG's profits.

Describing his dealings with Bloom, Ross said, “I found him first of all very, very pragmatic, not overly ideological,” and “a very, very good negotiator.”

In September 2003, Bloom led contract negotiations with Goodyear Tire, where the USW represented 19,000 active employees and more than 40,000 retirees.

The company's management believed rising costs required that they replace several U.S. factories with new facilities in Asia, but the USW proposed an alternative that entailed major changes to Goodyear's long-term business plan.

Ultimately, Bloom negotiated an agreement that included concessions in exchange for limits on executive salaries, agreements to restructure the company's debt and invest in U.S. factories, and the right of the union to nominate someone to sit on the company's Board of Directors.

The USW avoided significant layoffs, and Jonathan Rich, a senior Goodyear executive, said, “We got what we needed” to become competitive again.

In 2006, the Brazilian steel company Companhia Siderúrgica Nacional (CSN) tried to merge with Wheeling-Pittsburgh Corporation (Wheeling-Pitt), a transaction that would have cost a significant number of U.S. jobs.

The Steelworkers were opposed to the deal, so Bloom orchestrated a hostile takeover by Esmark, a Chicago-based steel-distribution company, to keep Wheeling-Pitt out of CSN's hands and avoid layoffs.

In February 2009, Bloom was named Senior Advisor to the Secretary of the Treasury on the President's Task Force on the Automotive Industry.

As the deputy to Steve Rattner (who led the Auto Team at Treasury), he helped manage the process that led to the reorganization of General Motors and Chrysler.

An experienced dealmaker, he played a key role in extracting concessions from the companies, their lenders and other creditors, and the United Auto Workers (UAW).

Bloom was particularly central to the Chrysler negotiations, where his strategy emphasized shared sacrifice to maximize value for all parties.

He convinced the UAW, whose principal interest was preserving jobs, to accept painful wage-and-benefit concessions.

In return, a VEBA for UAW members would receive a significant equity stake in the reorganized company.

The announcement of that agreement put pressure on Chrysler's creditors to forgive a significant portion of their loans.

With those commitments sealed, the Treasury agreed to provide the necessary financing to set the company back on its feet.

This included working as the Assistant to the President for Manufacturing Policy between February 2011 and August 2011, in the Department of the Treasury as a senior advisor to the Secretary of the Treasury, as a member of the President's Task Force on the Automotive Industry, and as senior counselor to the president for manufacturing policy.