Herbert J. Siegel, Investor in Major Media Deals, Dies at 95

Herbert J. Siegel, a maverick investor who turned a billionaire entertainment-industry mogul most notable for lastly enabling the merger of Warner Communications and Time Inc. in 1989 and for promoting 10 tv stations to Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation in 2000, died on Saturday at his dwelling in Manhattan. He was 95.

His spouse, Jeanne, mentioned the trigger was coronary heart failure.

Mr. Siegel, the gregarious son of an immigrant garment producer, mixed his boyhood passions — deal-making and an infatuation with the movie {industry} — to reap huge income.

The humorist Art Buchwald as soon as mentioned that Mr. Siegel deserved an Academy Award for having earned probably the most cash in Hollywood with out ever making a film.

Mr. Siegel acquired began younger; he was nonetheless in school when, flush with a belief fund from his father, he sought to buy a 20 p.c stake within the Philadelphia Eagles of the National Football League for $60,000. His bid was unsuccessful, so as an alternative he purchased an curiosity in an organization that packaged tv applications and that was partly owned by his father-in-law, an organizer of the Columbia Broadcasting System.

After shopping for a brewery, a car-wax firm and a jukebox producer, he additional insinuated himself into the leisure enterprise in 1962 by shopping for General Artists Corporation, a expertise company that represented, amongst others, Pat Boone, Perry Como and Jackie Gleason.

In 1965, after constructing a base on the Baldwin-Montrose Chemical Company, he netted $2.5 million from a failed bid for Paramount Pictures, then acquired the boat maker Chris-Craft Industries, the place he served as chairman. His aim was to purchase undervalued corporations, funnel their earnings to Chris-Craft’s earnings assertion and promote these investments for a capital achieve.

“At 28, I was the youngest chairman of a company on the American Stock Exchange,” he instructed The New York Times in 1984.

He bought off Chris-Craft’s boat-making enterprise and charmed Wall Street, regardless of losses on the firm’s chemical division, the most important producer of the insecticide DDT, and its tv division.

He misplaced an eight-year bid to accumulate Piper Aircraft, however in 1980 he bought his stake in twentieth Century Fox, which he had begun accumulating two years earlier, for $74 million, accumulating a revenue of greater than $800 million as soon as Chris Craft Industries settled an acrimonious dispute that enabled Warner Communications to merge with Time Inc.

He had sought to purchase Warner in 1968, then stepped in because the film mogul Steven J. Ross’s white knight within the early Eighties, investing in a 21 p.c stake within the firm to fend off a takeover by Mr. Murdoch.

But their partnership soured after Mr. Siegel turned vexed by Warner’s extravagant company tradition and invoked an earlier settlement between Warner and Chris-Craft that delayed the Time-Warner merger till 1989. Chris-Craft’s inventory soared on account of the deal, and the corporate collected about $1 billion.

“We are delighted,” Mr. Ross and Mr. Siegel mentioned in an announcement, “that despite our earlier differences, the relationship between Warner and Chris-Craft is ending on a constructive and amicable basis.”

In 2000, Mr. Siegel reaped a windfall from the sale of 10 tv stations to Mr. Murdoch’s News Corp. for $5.3 billion in money and inventory — a blockbuster deal that authorities filings estimated generated greater than $1 billion for Mr. Siegel, though his household mentioned he truly netted round half that quantity. The sale offered News Corp. with precious TV retailers in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco.

“The name of the game is how well the shareholders are doing,” Mr. Siegel instructed The Times. “Are they richer because they made an investment?” He continued, “They want to make more money through capital gain, and that’s my responsibility.”

Mr. Siegel was not a hands-on supervisor. He carried out enterprise by preserving one eye mounted on the Quotron stock-price monitor beside his desk and an ear to the cellphone whereas his attorneys had been embroiled in hostile takeovers.

“Herb’s not the kind of guy who’s going to get grease under his nails,” J. Ira Harris, a former government managing director of Salomon Brothers who was concerned in Mr. Siegel’s negotiations with twentieth Century Fox, mentioned in 1984. “He’s a phenomenal asset manager rather than a business manager.”

Herbert Jay Siegel was born on May 7, 1928, in Philadelphia to Jacob Siegel, an overcoat producer who had immigrated from Romania, and Frieda (Stern) Siegel, a musician and homemaker.

He graduated from Blair Academy in Blairstown, N.J., after which, in 1950, from Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pa., with a bachelor’s diploma in journalism.

That similar yr he married Ann Levy, whose father, Isaac D. Levy, had been an organizer of CBS. She died in 2005.

In 2007 he married Jeanne Sorenson. In addition to her, his survivors embody two sons from his first marriage, John and William, and two grandchildren.

While Mr. Siegel was thought of a beneficiant philanthropist and was hardly miserly in his private spending (Frank Sinatra sang at his first wedding ceremony; Tony Bennett sang at his second), he was taught the worth of hard-earned money early in life. One of his first acquisitions was a sentimental one: the overcoat firm began by his father, who had come to America with the equal of $5 in his pocket.

“He insisted I pay him with a certified check and would take no stock,” Mr. Siegel mentioned.