Ronald Perelman

Ronald Owen Perelman (born January 1, 1943) is an American banker, businessman, investor, and philanthropist.

MacAndrews & Forbes Incorporated, his company, has invested in companies with interests in groceries, cigars, licorice, makeup, cars, photography, television, camping supplies, security, gaming, jewelry, banks, and comic book publishing.

Perelman holds significant shares in companies such as Deluxe Entertainment, Revlon, SIGA Technologies, RetailMeNot, Merisant, Scantron, Scientific Games Corporation, Valassis, vTv Therapeutics and Harland Clarke.

Perelman was born in Greensboro, North Carolina, on January 1, 1943, the son of Ruth (née Caplan) and Raymond G. Perelman.

He was raised in a Jewish family in Elkins Park, Pennsylvania, and is the grandson of Litvak immigrants.

With family members, he managed the American Paper Products Corporation.

Raymond eventually left the company and bought Belmont Iron Works, a manufacturer of structural steel.

Perelman's first major business deal took place in 1961 during his Freshman year at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

He and his father bought the Esslinger Brewery for $800,000, then sold it three years later for a $1 million profit.

Throughout Perelman's tenure at the Belmont Iron Works (later renamed Belmont Industries) he assisted his father on other deals.

Their general strategy was to purchase a company, sell off superfluous divisions to reduce debt and generate profit, bring the company back to its core business, and either sell it or hang onto it for cash flow.

Perelman graduated from The Haverford School in Haverford, Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania in 1962.

From his father, Perelman learned the fundamentals of business.

By the time Ronald turned eleven years old he regularly sat in on board meetings of his father's company.

He earned his MBA from Wharton in 1966.

In 1978, twelve years after Perelman formally joined Belmont Industries, he was the vice president but he still strove for more power and influence in the company.

His father Raymond told him that he had no intention of stepping down anytime soon.

Perelman resigned and moved to New York.

The two barely spoke to one another for the next six years.

He orchestrated the purchase of Cohen-Hatfield Jewelers in 1978, his first deal as an independent investor free of his father's influence and took a loan from his wife, Faith Golding.

Within a year, Perelman had sold all of the company's retail locations and reduced the company to its lucrative wholesale jewelry division, earning him $15 million.

Perelman acquired MacAndrews & Forbes, a distributor of licorice extract and chocolate.

He faced resistance from the management and investors who filed an unsuccessful lawsuit to prevent the acquisition, but Perelman prevailed.

In 1983, Perelman started selling bonds to acquire the remaining 66% stake in MacAndrews & Forbes Group Inc. to take MacAndrews & Forbes Group Inc. private.

Also in 1983, MacAndrews had acquired Technicolor Inc. Despite the bond debt, in 1984, MacAndrews & Forbes purchased Consolidated Cigar Holdings Ltd. from Gulf & Western Industries, in addition to Video Corporation of America.

Ronald Perelman's controlling buyout of Compact Video was in 1986.

The Technicolor Inc. divisions were sold off and, in 1988, its core business was sold to Carlton Communications for 6.5 times the purchase price.

Using the proceeds from the Technicolor division sell off, MacAndrews & Forbes purchased a 20 percent stake in Compact Video Inc., a television and film syndication company.

In 1989, Perelman acquired New World Entertainment, with David Charnay's Four Star Television becoming a unit of Ronald Perelman's Compact Video, later that year.

Ownership of Compact Video Inc. was increased to 40% in 1989 after the buyout of Four Star International.

After Compact shut down, its remaining assets, including Four Star, were folded into MacAndrews and Forbes Incorporated.

In 1989, Perelman also acquired New World Entertainment with Four Star becoming a division of New World as part of the transaction.

Four Star International was purchased through a golden parachute deal that was negotiated with David Charnay by Ronald Perelman after Charnay was notified of stock purchases made by Perelman in 1989.

By the end of 1989, MacAndrews refinanced the Holding companies' junk bonds for standard bank loans.

A 2006 article published in the Forbes 400 discusses their rough relationship in detail.

Perelman first attended the Villanova School of Business for one semester before transferring to the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, where he majored in business.

In September 2017, Forbes magazine named Perelman as one of the "100 Greatest Living Business Minds".

Previously worth $19.8 billion in 2018, Perelman is, as of November 2022, worth $1.9 billion.

He previously owned a majority of shares in AM General, but in 2020 sold the majority of his shares in AM General along with significant works of art, in light of the impact of the economy on the high debt burdens many of his companies have from leveraged buyouts.

In early 2020, Revlon, acquired by Perelman in the 1980s, undertook a debt deal.