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(Reuters) – The combative self-made billionaire Sheldon Adelson, who built the world’s largest casino empire and used his fortune to nurture conservative politicians and politicians in the United States and Israel, has died at 87.
The American casino mogul, raised in a poor Jewish immigrant family in Boston as the son of a taxi driver, established luxurious hotels and casinos in Las Vegas, Macau, and Singapore, and ran the world’s largest casino company, Las Vegas Sands. Corp.
Adelson’s wealth made him a formidable figure in American and Israeli politics and in the media. He was a strong supporter of US President Donald Trump, former US President George W. Bush, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as well as a prolific donor to US Republican politicians and an enemy of Democrats, including former US President Barack Obama.
“He was an American patriot, a generous benefactor of charitable causes and a staunch supporter of Israel,” Bush said in a statement.
Adelson died Monday night from complications related to treatment for non-Hodgkin lymphoma, a cancer of the lymphatic system, Las Vegas Sands said in a statement Tuesday.
With a net worth of $ 33.4 billion as of this week, Adelson ranked as the 38th richest person in the world on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Known for his extensive philanthropy and business endeavors in Israel and his donations to Jewish causes, Adelson counted Netanyahu as a close friend.
“Sheldon’s tremendous actions to strengthen Israel’s position in the United States and the connection between Israel and the (Jewish) Diaspora will be remembered for generations,” Netanyahu said in a statement.
Adelson and his Israeli-born medical wife, Miriam, donated more than $ 218 million to Republican and conservative causes in the 2020 U.S. election cycle, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks political spending, more than anyone else.
They were prolific backers of Trump’s 2016 presidential bid and supported him during his turbulent presidency. The casino mogul was in regular contact with Trump after he took office and saw some of his cherished Israel-related goals come to fruition, including moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem in a break with decades of American politics. . Adelson attended the inauguration ceremony of the embassy in May 2018.
“I am against very rich people trying or influencing elections. But as long as it is feasible, I will,” Adelson told Forbes magazine in 2012.
Adelson, a college dropout, was short and stocky with increasingly thinner red hair, and in later years used a motorized scooter due to a medical condition that made it difficult for him to walk. But his appearance belied his influence and drive.
His empire in the United States, Macau, and Singapore was exemplified by the Venetian resort’s casino in Las Vegas, which featured replicas of landmarks from Venice, Italy, such as canals, the Rialto Bridge, and the bell tower of St. Mark’s Basilica. It filled its gaming centers with trendy restaurants and shops, making them luxury destinations for business travelers and tourists alike.
AN HONOR OF TRUMP
In November 2018, Trump awarded Adelson’s wife the highest American civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, a move that critics criticized as a presidential “thank you” for the couple’s financial backing. During the ceremony at the White House, Trump praised the Adelsons for protecting “the sacred heritage of the Jewish faith,” placed the medal around her neck and kissed her on both cheeks.
“I know a lot of people think that guys like me succeed by stepping on the broken backs of employees and other people, but they don’t understand that we too have philosophies and ideals that we adhere to very scrupulously,” Adelson said. he said at a 2008 Las Vegas event, according to the New Yorker magazine.
Adelson also backed Bush, who served eight years as president, then invested tens of millions of dollars in the failed efforts in 2008 and 2012 to defeat Obama.
Adelson changed the Israeli media landscape in 2007 by launching Israel Hayom, a free right-wing daily that took a pro-Netanyahu line.
Adelson wrote in his newspaper in 2012 that Netanyahu was not “my puppet.” He was responding to former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who had accused Netanyahu of intervening in an American election by opposing Obama “on behalf of an American billionaire (Adelson) with a clear interest in the vote.”
Although initially reluctant to donate for Trump’s presidential bid, he became a Trump sponsor even as other wealthy Republican donors stayed away. Trump won his first major newspaper endorsement of the 2016 general election when the Adelson-owned Las Vegas Review-Journal endorsed him.
Adelson and his family paid $ 140 million in December 2015 to buy the Review-Journal, the city’s leading newspaper, in a secret transaction. The purchase price reflected a 75% premium over what he had sold nine months earlier. After the family’s ownership was revealed, an avalanche of reporters and editors left the newspaper.
Detractors described Adelson, who participated in a court battle with his own children, fights with former partners and lawsuits against journalists, as vindictive and petty.
“Over time, I observed that Mr. Adelson plots revenge against anyone he believed stood in his way. Minuscule as the perceived outrage was, I was sure he would go insane, using his money and position to intimidate anyone. ‘opponent,’ big or small, in submission, “wrote Shelley Berkley, who worked for Adelson before serving from 1999 to 2013 as a Democratic congressman for Nevada, in a Las Vegas newspaper in 1998.
Adelson was born in Boston in 1933. At age 12, he began selling newspapers on street corners. At 16, he had a candy vending machine business.
Early in his business career, Adelson dabbled in business ventures before launching a Las Vegas computer fair in 1979 that became the largest in the world. He used his success as a springboard to buy the aging Las Vegas Sands Hotel, then built America’s largest private convention center and later the Venetian.
Macau, a former Portuguese colony neighboring Macau and Hong Kong known for gambling, returned to Chinese rule in 1999. Foreign casino companies got their chance after the Macau gambling monopoly of a Hong Kong businessman ended .
When China opened Macau’s gambling sector to foreign casino operators in 2001, Adelson was the fastest, building Sands Macau and later resorts and a convention center on Macau’s Las Vegas-style Cotai strip. , ushering in an era of astonishing growth.
In 2004, Adelson opened his first casino and later Macau became the world’s leading gambling center. The initial public offering of Las Vegas Sands in December 2004 made him a billionaire.
Adelson has been credited with helping broaden Macau’s appeal away from the hard-core gambling halls that had flourished for decades under the monopoly of former gambling kingpin Stanley Ho.
While visiting a casino project in Macau in 2007, Adelson defended China’s communist rulers against critics of the Asian giant’s human rights record, including US lawmakers.
His domain also included Singapore’s Marina Bay Sands, which opened in 2010, for $ 6 billion, and a casino in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.
After his first marriage ended, in 1991 Adelson married Miriam Ochshorn, a physician who specialized in the treatment of drug addiction. One of Adelson’s sons from his previous marriage, Mitchell, died in 2005 at age 48 of a drug overdose.
(Reporting by Will Dunham; Additional reporting by Leslie Adler, Doina Chiacu, and Farah Master; Editing by Bill Trott and Edward Tobin)
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