Wilbur Ross

Wilbur Louis Ross Jr. (born November 28, 1937) is an American businessman who served as the 39th United States secretary of commerce from 2017 to 2021.

Ross was born on November 28, 1937, in Weehawken, New Jersey, and grew up in nearby North Bergen, New Jersey.

His father, Wilbur Louis Ross, was a lawyer who later became a judge, and his mother, Agnes (née O'Neill), of Irish descent, was valedictorian at Sacred Heart Academy in Hoboken and taught third grade in North Bergen for 40 years.

Ross attended Xavier High School, a Catholic school, and college-preparatory school in Manhattan.

He ran track and was captain of the rifle team.

He graduated in 1955.

In 1959, he received a bachelor's degree from Yale College, his father's alma mater.

At Yale, Ross edited one of the literary magazines and worked at the radio station.

His dream was to be a writer.

He enrolled in an English course that required writing a thousand words by 10 a.m. every day; after two weeks, he ran out of things to write about and dropped the course.

His faculty adviser at Yale helped him get his first summer job on Wall Street.

In 1961, he received a Master of Business Administration degree at Harvard Business School.

In 1963, he joined what became Wood, Struthers & Winthrop.

There, he liquidated the portfolio of its venture capital affiliate.

He then worked for Faulkner, Dawkins & Sullivan, an institutional securities research company, where he rose to become president of its investment banking operation.

The firm was sold to what became Shearson Lehman.

Ross ran the bankruptcy restructuring practice at N M Rothschild & Sons in New York beginning in the late 1970s.

In 1976, Ross began his 24-year employment with the New York City office of Rothschild & Co, where he ran the bankruptcy restructuring advisory practice.

In the 1980s, Donald Trump's three casinos in Atlantic City were under threat of foreclosure from lenders.

Ross, who was then the senior managing director of Rothschild & Co, represented investors in the casino.

Along with Carl Icahn, Ross convinced bondholders to strike a deal that allowed Trump to keep control of the casinos.

In the 1990s, Ross was an adviser to New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani on privatization, and was appointed by U.S. president Bill Clinton to the board of The U.S. Russia Investment Fund.

In November 1997, under Rothschild & Co, Ross started a $200 million fund to invest in distressed securities.

In its first year, it earned a 15.2% return.

By 1998, Ross was involved in eight of the 25 biggest bankruptcies to date, including Drexel Burnham Lambert, Texaco, Public Service of New Hampshire (now Eversource Energy), and Eastern Air Lines.

A member of the Republican Party, Ross was previously chairman and chief executive officer of WL Ross & Co from 2000 to 2017.

In 2000, he left Rothschild to found WL Ross & Co. Ross was a banker known for acquiring and restructuring failed companies in industries such as steel, coal, telecommunications and textiles, later selling them for a profit after operations improved, a record that had earned him the moniker "King of Bankruptcy".

Ross has been chairman or lead director of more than 100 companies operating in more than 20 countries.

In April 2000, just before the dot-com bubble burst, Ross founded WL Ross & Co and raised $450 million to buy the fund from Rothschild and make additional investments.

In February 2002, WL Ross & Co founded International Steel Group.

He first agreed to buy the assets of bankrupt Ling-Temco-Vought for $325 million, paying $11 per ton of capacity when other firms were trading for $200 per ton of capacity.

A few weeks later, George W. Bush slapped a 30% tariff on many types of imported steel.

A year later, WL Ross & Co acquired the assets of bankrupt Bethlehem Steel.

As part of the bankruptcy reorganizations, these companies shifted their huge pension liabilities to the government-backed Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation.

Ross had support from the United Steelworkers, negotiating a deal to save some jobs.

By 2003, the fund had averaged a 30% return.

In April 2005, WL Ross & Co sold International Steel Group to Mittal Steel Company for $4.5 billion, half in cash and half in stock, and made 12.5 times its original investment.

Ross personally made a $260 million profit on his $3 million investment and gained a seat on the board of directors of Mittal Steel.

In 2006, Ross sold WL Ross & Co to Amvescap (now Invesco).

In 2017, Ross became commerce secretary in the Donald Trump administration; at age 79, Ross was the oldest first-time Cabinet appointee in U.S. history.