Zuckerman was born in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, the son of Esther and Abraham Zuckerman, who owned a tobacco and candy store.[4][5] His family is Jewish, and his grandfather was an Orthodoxrabbi.[6] Zuckerman entered McGill University in Montreal at the age of 16.[7] He graduated from McGill with a BA in 1957 and a BCL in 1961, although he never took the bar exam.[8] That same year, Zuckerman entered the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, where he earned an MBA degree with a distinction of honor. In 1962, he received an LLM degree from Harvard Law School.
Business career
After graduating, Zuckerman remained at Harvard Business School as an associate professor for nine years. He also taught at Yale University. Zuckerman spent seven years at the real estate firm Cabot, Cabot & Forbes,[9] where he rose to the position of senior vice president and chief financial officer.[10]
In 1980, he purchased the literary magazine The Atlantic, where he was the chairman from 1980 to 1999. In 1999 he sold the magazine to David G. Bradley for US$12 million. Commenting on this sale and that of Fast Company magazine, which he sold for $365 million at the height of the tech boom in 2000, he quipped, "I averaged out."[8]
In addition to his publishing and real-estate interests, Zuckerman is also a frequent commentator on world affairs, both as an editorialist and on television. He regularly appeared on MSNBC and The McLaughlin Group and writes columns for U.S. News & World Report and the New York Daily News.
Zuckerman has varied in his party affiliations over time,[11] since the late 1970s.
On July 12, 2010, Zuckerman said in an interview that he had helped to write one of President Barack Obama's political speeches.[12] Long-time Obama speechwriters Jon Favreau and Ben Rhodes disputed that and asserted that neither "has ever met or spoken to Mort Zuckerman."[13] Zuckerman later published a clarification of his remarks by stating that his help had come in the form of private conversations with various political officials in which he had offered advice and perspective on different issues.[14]
Zuckerman, a long-time supporter of the Democratic party who cast his vote for Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential election, was critical of President Obama on several fronts. Following the downgrade of US treasury debt by Standard & Poor's in 2011, Zuckerman wrote in The Wall Street Journal: "I long for a triple-A president to run a triple-A country."[15] After initially supporting Obama's call for heavy infrastructure spending to revive the economy, Zuckerman criticized the composition of the plan: "if you look at the make-up of the stimulus program, roughly half of it went to state and local municipalities, which is in effect to the municipal unions which are at the core of the Democratic party."[15]
On Obama's healthcare reform bill, Zuckerman stated, "Eighty percent of the country wanted them to get costs under control, not to extend the coverage. They used all their political capital to extend the coverage. I always had the feeling the country looked at the bill and said, 'Well, he may be doing it because he wants to be a transformational president, but I want to get my costs down!'"[15]
In 1996 Zuckerman married Marla Prather, a curator of the National Gallery of Art.[21] The couple divorced in 2001, and Prather later married lawyer Jonathan D. Schiller.[22]
On the November 28, 2014, episode of The McLaughlin Group, Zuckerman said he was a vegan and has been since 2008,[24] confirming what in November 2010 had been published in Bloomberg Businessweek, "The Rise of the Power Vegans."[25] Zuckerman last appeared on The McLaughlin Group on July 31, 2015, making a case for Texas governor Rick Perry's presidential run during that episode. A day later Zuckerman issued a statement that he would not be appearing at the East Hampton Artists-Writers softball game, the first time he would miss the game since 1993. The same month, the New York Post reported he turned over the sale of the New York Daily News to his nephews and has commented minimally on its dissolution.
Philanthropy
In May 2004, Zuckerman pledged $10 million to Harvard University to fund a fellowship for students who are pursuing or have earned professional degree in law, business or medicine but are interested in a degree at Harvard’s Harvard Graduate School of Education, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, or the Harvard Kennedy School.[26] The Zuckerman Fellowship funds a scholarship for full tuition, fees, and health insurance plus an annual stipend for one academic year.[27]
In May 2006, Zuckerman pledged $100 million from his charitable trust towards Memorial Sloan Kettering's new cancer research facility. His donation was the largest single commitment by an individual in Memorial Sloan Kettering's history.[28]
In December 2012, Zuckerman pledged $200 million to endow the Mortimer B. Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute at Columbia University.[29]
Involvement in Jewish organizations and Israel
Between 2001 and 2003, Zuckerman was the chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. Typically, the nominating committee attempts to choose a person who is both respected and uncontroversial. However, Zuckerman was widely opposed by liberal Jewish factions.[30][31] Nonetheless, Zuckerman was eventually elected and served a full term.
George W. Bush appointed Zuckerman to serve on the Honorary Delegation to accompany him to Jerusalem for the celebration of the 60th anniversary of the State of Israel in May 2008.[33][34]
Zuckerman is known to be a mentor to and close associate of Daniel M. Snyder,[36] former owner of the NFLfootball team Washington Commanders, and has been a financial backer to Snyder's business ventures (CampusUSA magazine),[37] and was a shareholder and director in Snyder Communications Inc.,[38] a marketing services business which was taken over in 2000 (by Havas Advertising).
Honors
Zuckerman has received three honorary degrees, including one from Colby College.[39] He was awarded Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the government of France in 1994,[40] a lifetime achievement award from Guild Hall and a gold medal from the American Institute of Architecture in New York.[41]
Bernard Madoff investment scandal
Zuckerman is one of the investors defrauded in a "Ponzi scheme", by way of investments with Fifth Avenue Synagogue president J. Ezra Merkin who staked roughly 10% ($30 million) of Zuckerman's charitable trust fund with convicted scammer Bernard Madoff.[42][43][44] Zuckerman has stated that all current charitable obligations will still be honored with no changes. At a forum at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in New York, he remarked that no one since Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, executed in 1953 for giving atomic secrets to the Soviet Union, "has so damaged the image and self respect of American Jews."[45]
On April 6, 2009, Zuckerman filed a lawsuit against J. Ezra Merkin and his Gabriel Capital LP. The lawsuit claims fraud and negligent representation and seeks unspecified punitive damages. Merkin had a "huge incentive not to disclose Madoff's role, especially to investors like Zuckerman" because he charged clients "substantial fees" to manage both his Ascot Partners LP and Gabriel Capital. The lawsuit claims over US$40 million in losses for placing his assets with Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC without his knowledge. Zuckerman invested US$25 million with Merkin's Ascot Fund in 2006 through his Charitable Remainder Trust or CRT Investments Limited and personally invested US$15 million with Merkin's Gabriel Capital. Merkin charged Zuckerman a 1.5% fee and imposed significant "lock-up restrictions on redemptions", but his agreement with Gabriel Capital contains an arbitration clause against Merkin for his lost personal US$15 million investment. The lawsuit also named the accounting firm BDO Seidman LLP and a related entity called BDO Tortuga as defendants.[46]
Although Zuckerman has been known as a Democrat, he was speculated to run for the Senate in 2010 as a Republican or an independent in order to avoid an expensive primary.[47]
Critics pointed to apparent inconsistencies in Zuckerman's publicly stated positions on key issues. Wayne Barrett, of the Village Voice wrote: "If real estate titan Mort Zuckerman gets into the senate race against Kirsten Gillibrand, we'll finally have a vigorous debate about the big-ticket issues troubling Americans. All we have to do is listen to Mort and we'll get both sides of the key economic questions."[48]
However, on March 2, 2010, he declined to run, citing family and work obligations.[49]
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Affinity fraud is a form of investment fraud in which the fraudster preys upon members of identifiable groups, such as religious or ethnic communities, language minorities, the elderly, or professional groups. The fraudsters who promote affinity scams frequently are – or successfully pretend to be – members of the group. They often enlist respected community or religious leaders from within the group to spread the word about the scheme, by convincing those people that a fraudulent investment is legitimate and worthwhile. Many times, those leaders become unwitting victims of the fraudster's ruse.
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Bernard Lawrence Madoff was an American financial criminal and financier who was the admitted mastermind of the largest known Ponzi scheme in history, worth an estimated $65 billion. He was at one time chairman of the Nasdaq stock exchange. Madoff's firm had two basic units: a stock brokerage and an asset management business; the Ponzi scheme was centered in the asset management business.
Jacob Ezra Merkin is an American investor, hedge fund manager and philanthropist. He had been a fund manager and capital raiser until 2008 when one of the funds in Gabriel Capital LP, his $5 billion group of hedge funds became insolvent because a large portion of its assets was invested with the convicted Ponzi scheme operator Bernard Madoff. The fallout from his investment with Madoff has been extensive. He navigated a series of lawsuits without a finding of fraud or knowledge of the scheme, but agreed to repay any fees earned from the investment in Madoff historically. He had to resign a series of positions including his role as non-executive chairman of GMAC.
The Madoff investment scandal was a major case of stock and securities fraud discovered in late 2008. In December of that year, Bernie Madoff, the former Nasdaq chairman and founder of the Wall Street firm Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC, admitted that the wealth management arm of his business was an elaborate multi-billion-dollar Ponzi scheme.
Participants in the Madoff investment scandal included employees of Bernard Madoff's investment firm with specific knowledge of the Ponzi scheme, a three-person accounting firm that assembled his reports, and a network of feeder funds that invested their clients' money with Madoff while collecting significant fees. Madoff avoided most direct financial scrutiny by accepting investments only through these feeder funds, while obtaining false auditing statements for his firm. The liquidation trustee of Madoff's firm has implicated managers of the feeder funds for ignoring signs of Madoff's deception.
The recovery of funds from the Madoff investment scandal has been underway since the scandal broke in December 2008. That month, recovery trustee Irving Picard received funds from the Bank of New York account where Bernard Madoff held new investments into his Ponzi scheme. As it has been concluded that no legitimate investments were made on the investors' behalf for at least the last 12 years of operation, recovery has proceeded on a "money in/money out" basis. Investors are entitled to receive no more than the nominal cash amounts that they paid in and did not subsequently withdraw, without regard to inflation, interest, opportunity cost or the false statements that Madoff provided them. Those statements combined to a total balance of approximately $64 billion, while the admitted claims amount to $19.5 billion. As of March 2023, the trustee had recovered $14.6 billion toward these claims through legal action against Madoff associates, feeder funds and beneficiaries of the scheme, and had made fourteen distributions to investors. Action by the Department of Justice has recovered an additional $4 billion.
Jeffry M. Picower was an American investor involved in the Madoff investment scandal. He was the largest beneficiary of Madoff's Ponzi scheme, and his widow agreed to have his estate settle the claims against it by Madoff trustee Irving Picard for $7.2 billion, the largest single forfeiture in American judicial history.
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