RIKLIS, MESHULAM

RIKLIS, MESHULAM (1923– ), financier. Born in Istanbul, Turkey, Riklis was taken to Palestine as a child. He became a member of a kibbutz, and during World War II served in the British Army. After the war he emigrated to the United States, where he received an MBA from Ohio State University. To pay for his tuition, he worked full time as a teacher of Hebrew and Jewish history. He began his business career working for an investment house in Minneapolis, Minnesota. In 1954, backed by a group of Minneapolis investors, he began to amalgamate corporations into giant conglomerates. McCrory and Glen Alden Corporation, in which Riklis held large interests, belonged to the leading holding companies in the field of manufacturing and distributing consumer goods. Known as the father of the leveraged buyout, Riklis used borrowed money to purchase undervalued companies, then used those assets to provide the leverage for larger takeovers. In the early 1980s he became chairman and CEO of the Riklis Family Corporation, the successor to Rapid-American, a former public company that he had been made private in 1981. Riklis then became chairman of the privately held retail chain McCrory. His other holdings have included companies such as the Riviera Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. He also owns a large shopping mall in Virginia. Riklis was married to entertainer Pia Zadora from 1977 to 1993. In 1988 the couple purchased Pickfair, the former Beverly Hills estate of film legends Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks. They generated a wave of criticism when they demolished the Hollywood landmark and rebuilt it to three times its size. Riklis has been prominent in many Jewish institutions and active in the United Jewish Appeal. He was a generous supporter of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, Brandeis University and of Martin Luther King's institutions as well as many public institutions in lsrael. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: O. Schisgall, The Magic of Mergers: The Saga of Meshulam Riklis (1968). ADD. BIBLIOGRAPHY: I. Barmash, For the Good of the Company: The History of the McCrory Corporation (2003). (Joachim O. Ronall / Ruth Beloff (2nd ed.)