IRA RENNERT

'Ira Rennert' (born 1934 in Brooklyn, New York) is a Humvee and Renco Group tycoon, philanthropist, and supposed recluse whose various companies have been accused of wreaking environmental havoc in the U.S. and abroad.^[1] The publicity-shy, self-made billionaire riled New York's tony Hamptonites^[2] by building a beach front home in Sagaponack, New York considered one of the largest occupied residential compounds in America.^[3] Real estate magnates claim if this house was ever put on the market it would be valued the most expensive home globally.
His 100,000 square foot (9,000 m²) home, dubbed Fair Field (named after the adjoining body of water, Fairfield Pond), faces the Atlantic Ocean and is perched on 63 acres. The buildings have an Italianate facade, 29 bedrooms, and 39 bathrooms. A dozen chimneys tower from the Mediterranean-style tile roof. The formal dining room stretches 91 feet in length. That's three feet shorter than a basketball court—another amenity Fair Field has, along with a bowling alley, a pair each of tennis and squash courts, and a $150,000 hot tub, according to building plans and other documents filed with Southampton town hall. Its property taxes in 2004 were $392, 610.24.
The house outraged locals, who originally claimed Rennert planned to use it as everything from a spa to a hotel to a religious retreat. Rennert denied such allegations, and the local paper recently wrote an apology acknowledging that the original allegations were wrong and that the house did not change the character of Sagaponack which was undergoing its own cultural change regardless of Rennert.^[4]
Ira Rennert was awarded the ''The Awful Truth'' Man of Year Award in 1999 by filmmaker Michael Moore, who accused Rennert of being an epic polluter.

Contents

Education

Career

Renco Group

Environmental concerns

United States

Peru

Philanthropy

Wealth

Family

References

External links

Education

Ira Rennert is a graduate of Brooklyn College. He earned his master's degree from New York University's Stern School of Business, where he is currently on the Board of Overseers.^[5]

Career

Ira Rennert worked as a credit analyst at a Wall Street firm and later as a typewriter company salesman before venturing into the stock brokerage business. He launched his own securities firm, I.L. Rennert & Co. but came under NASD scrutiny in 1962, when he was censured for operating without enough capital. The following year, Rennert was caught for the same offense. The NASD revoked Rennert's license to operate in 1964, effectively banning him from the securities industry. Rennert has denied through a spokesperson that he was ever reprimanded by NASD.
With his brokerage career brought to an abrupt halt, Rennert spent the next decade consulting.^[6] In the 1980s, he turned to private equity, a financial domain largely free of NASD and Securities & Exchange Commission regulations. He purchased a bankrupt Warren, Ohio steel company, WCI Steel Inc., in 1988 for $140 million. Taking a page from Wall Street's dominant 80s business model — "Junk Bond King" Michael Milken advocated the use of high-yield debt, or junk-bonds, to woo investors — Rennert issued $250 million in junk-bonds and temporarily turned WCI Steel around. Jay Zises, a Wall Street executive connected with Integrated Resources Inc., asked Rennert to serve on the New York-based real estate investment firm's board of directors. The 1991 book "Den of Thieves" details how Integrated executives pocketed enormous salaries but later defaulted on $1 billion in bond-debt. Alleging fraud, furious shareholders sued Integrated's chief executive and directors, including Rennert. In 1995, the suit was settled for $10.6 million, paid for with insurance money. The executives never admitted or denied wrongdoing.
Emerging unscathed, Rennert continued to build wealth without putting much of his personal fortune on the line. His holding company, Renco Group, Inc., gobbled up struggling companies, issued junk-bonds and charged its subsidiaries management fees and dividends.^[7] When Rennert's Magnesium Corp. of America filed for bankruptcy, bondholders petitioned for a court-appointed trustee to decide if certain company transfers were legal, or if Renco Group had knowingly left the company insolvent. According to documents filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Renco subsidiaries have borrowed $1.1 billion since 1995 and transferred nearly a third, or $322 million, back to Renco.

Renco Group

Rennert's company, the Renco Group, is essentially a holding group that owns other companies, such as WCI Steel,

Ira Rennert mansion in Sagaponack, New York

Doe Run, and used to own AM General, manufacturer of the legendary Hummer. Ira Rennert, bought AM General for $133 million in 1992. Ronald Perelman, a Wall Street corporate raider, bought a 70 percent interest in AM General of South Bend, Indiana. The deal reportedly cost close to US$1,000,000,000. The company makes the military Humvee, as well as the Hummer H1 and H2 sold by General Motors. The Renco Group has been criticized for their record on pollution and worker safety.

Environmental concerns

United States

The United States Environmental Protection Agency once placed Renco Group business holdings 10th on the nation's largest polluter list.
In 2001, the Justice Department and EPA took action against Renco, filing suit against the company. The agencies demanded nearly $1 billion in fines, alleging MagCorp (a Renco Metals Inc. subsidiary) dumped toxic waste in ditches and ponds on the Great Salt Lake, Utah.^[8] The suit claimed PCB-laced sludge and dust choked the plant's plumbing, wastewater ponds, landfill and ditches, where contaminants were 12 times the allowed limit for accidental release. MagCorp maintained it was exempt from the federal Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, which requires companies to monitor certain kinds of hazardous waste.
Rennert, the self-named "financial Houdini", nudged Magcorp into Chapter 11 bankruptcy shortly after the lawsuit began. A federal judge allowed Rennert to restructure MagCorp — now U.S. Magnesium — effectively exempting it from previous legal liability.^[9] Today, U.S. Magnesium is the third largest magnesium producer in the world.
Renco was able to wriggle out of one mess, but faced another in Herculaneum, Missouri. Locals in Herculaneum claimed their children were suffering from lead poisoning traceable to toxic emissions coming from Renco's Doe Run lead smelting plant.^[10] In 2000, the EPA and the Missouri Department of Natural Resources tested area lead levels and ordered Doe Run to clean up locations where lead levels exceeded EPA standards. A 2002 study showed more than half of the children living within a quarter mile of the smelter had high blood-lead levels. Doe Run settled with the state and bought 160 homes located in the contaminated area around the smelter at a cost of more than $10 million.

Peru

Doe Run, Peru, (a Renco Group holding) operates a smelting plant in La Oroya, Peru, where many of the same environmental violations that were present in Herculaneum, Missouri, are being visited on La Oroya's 12,000 children.^[11] The Blacksmith Institute has placed La Oroya on its list of ten most polluted places in the world, along with Chernobyl, Ukraine.^[12]In August 2007, it was reported that air levels of arsenic levels were 85 times more than the "safe" level, cadmium 41 times, and lead 13 times more. Water levels of lead exceeded the "safe" lead level (as established by the World Health Organisation) as well.^[13]
The Peruvian government originally sold the smelter to Doe Run in 1997. The site was already contaminated, but as part of the purchase agreement Doe Run Peru agreed to remedy a list of pollution-related problems by January 2007. Doe Run Peru couldn't meet the deadline and asked for and received a four year extension. In 2005, the company claimed to have cut air pollution by 25 percent and water pollution by 90 percent. Doe Run officials say they have spent more than $107 million to bring the smelter into compliance with Peruvian regulations.
Meanwhile, thousands of children in La Oroya are suffering the effects of lead poisoning as hundreds of tons of toxins continue to spew from the smelting plant. A recent study by St. Louis University scientists found that 97 percent of children in La Oroya suffer from mental and physical deficiencies related to their exposure to polluted air.
Recently, the local population elected a new mayor and new union leaders. While the previous mayor and union leaders sided with Renco Doe Run, the owner of the smelter, apparently out of fear of loss of jobs, when the Peruvian government attempted to force the smelter to reduce pollution emissions ^[13], the new mayor may prove less willing to sacrifice the population's health for jobs^[15]. He has called for the release of an audit of Doe Run conducted at the beginning of 2007 by the mining investment supervisory body to be reported. Additionally, he has supported an "alert program", saying that "It is necessary to protect ourselves until the company complies with reducing pollution." Approved July 18, 2007, the alert program consists of three levels (watch, danger and emergency); at each level, certain actions are taken which reduce the exposure to pollution and partially halt production lines for lead and copper. On the day the "alert program" was approved, the level of sulphur dioxide recorded over the course of three hours was 12,000 micrograms of sulphur dioxide per cubic metre of air, when the air quality standard only allows 364 micrograms. Carlos Rojas, regional coordinator of the government's national environmental council (CONAM) has stated that none of the three levels entails ceasing operations at the smelting plant. ^[15]

Philanthropy

Ira Rennert and his wife, Ingeborg, contribute to numerous charitable causes, especially those centered around the Jewish faith. Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel has called Rennert, "a deeply, deeply religious man".
Amongst other charitable giving, Ira and Ingeborg Rennert have:

★ Endowed a $2.5 million chair in Jewish studies at Barnard College

★ Donated $5 million to establish the Wiesel Center at Boston University

★ Given more than $1 million to the World Trade Center Memorial

★ Established the Ira Leon Rennert Professor of Entrepreneurial Finance at New York University

★ Endowed the Ira Rennert Professor of Business at Columbia University

★ Founded the Rennert Center for Jerusalem Studies at Bar Ilan University

★ Helped restore the Western Heritage Wall in Jerusalem (the visitor's center is called The Ingeborg and Ira Leon Rennert Hall of Light)

★ Supported Lincoln Center with a $250,000 donation

Wealth

Ira Rennert ranks #891 on Forbes Magazine's list of World Billionaires.^[17]

Family

Ira Rennert and his wife, Ingeborg, have three children and are grandparents.

References

1. Ira Rennert's House of Debt
2. Rennert redux
3. Millionaire's Mega Mansion Shocks Even the Hamptons
4. An apolgogy to Ira Rennert of Sagaponack
5. The Board of Overseers
6. Rennert builds 0 million Hamptons mansion as companies fail
7. Pension battle may entangle mogul's home
8. EPA sues magnesium company
9. Man with many enemies
10. Lead Astray
11. In Peru, a poisoned town, a driven man
12. Religious Leaders Challenge Polluter
13. http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,2147039,00.html
14. http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,2147039,00.html
15. http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=38854
16. http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=38854
17. #891 Ira Rennert


★ Michael Shnayerson. "Devastating Luxury." '' Vanity Fair. '' July 2003.

★ James Ridgeway and Jeffrey St. Clair. A Pocket Guide to Environmental Bad Guys, (New York: Thunder's Mouth Press.

External links

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