A. Alfred Taubman obit

A. Alfred Taubman, billionaire convicted of price fixing, dies at 91

 

 He was not on the list.

A. Alfred Taubman, a self-made Michigan billionaire whose philanthropy and business success — including weaving the enclosed shopping mall into American culture — was clouded by a criminal conviction late in his career, died April 17 at his home in Bloomfield Hills, Mich. He was 91.

The cause was a heart attack, said his son Robert S. Taubman.

Mr. Taubman’s business success spanned from real estate and art houses to the hot dog-serving A&W restaurant chain. He also became a major backer of stem cell research.

From 1983 to 1984, Taubman was the majority owner of the Michigan Panthers of the United States Football League. Although the Panthers acquired a fairly loyal following and won the first USFL title in 1983, the USFL's decision to move from the spring to the fall led Taubman to merge his team with the Oakland Invaders for the 1985 season, with himself as majority owner of the Invaders. That team folded along with the rest of the USFL after the 1985 season.

But it was his rearrangement of how people shop — with a parking lot in front and several stores in one stop close to home — that left a mark on American culture. Taubman Centers, a subsidiary of his Taubman Co., founded in 1950, currently owns and manages 19 regional shopping centers nationwide.

Adolph Alfred Taubman was born Jan. 31, 1924, in Pontiac, Mich., to Jewish immigrants from Germany. He was a freshman at the University of Michigan when he left to serve in World War II, around the time he stopped using his first name.  

When he returned to Ann Arbor to study art and architecture, he created small on-campus businesses to cover his expenses, then transferred to Lawrence Technological University near Detroit to take night classes while working at an architectural firm as a junior draftsman.

Recognizing the booming postwar growth of the middle class, Mr. Taubman launched his real estate development company in 1950. His first project was a free-standing bridal shop in Detroit, but he had his eyes on something bigger.

When building a shopping plaza in nearby Flint, Mich., Mr. Taubman placed the stores in the back of the lot, and parking spaces were put up front. It was a success, and his young company took on larger-scale developments in Michigan, California and elsewhere in the 1950s and ’60s.

When he returned to Ann Arbor to study art and architecture, he created small on-campus businesses to cover his expenses, then transferred to Lawrence Technological University near Detroit to take night classes while working at an architectural firm as a junior draftsman.

Recognizing the booming postwar growth of the middle class, Mr. Taubman launched his real estate development company in 1950. His first project was a free-standing bridal shop in Detroit, but he had his eyes on something bigger.

When building a shopping plaza in nearby Flint, Mich., Mr. Taubman placed the stores in the back of the lot, and parking spaces were put up front. It was a success, and his young company took on larger-scale developments in Michigan, California and elsewhere in the 1950s and ’60s.

Mr. Taubman also served as chairman of Sotheby’s Holdings, the parent company of Sotheby’s art auction house, from 1983 to 2000, and was a partner in the international real estate firm the Athena Group before he became entangled in a price-fixing scheme.

He was convicted in 2001 of conspiring with Anthony Tennant, former chairman of Christie’s International, to fix the commissions the auction giants charged. Prosecutors alleged that sellers were bilked of as much as $400 million in commissions.

Mr. Taubman was fined $7.5 million and spent about a year in a low-security prison in Rochester, Minn.

“I had lost a chunk of my life, my good name and around 27 pounds,” he wrote in his 2007 autobiography, “Threshold Resistance,” while maintaining his innocence.

The case cast a shadow over Taubman’s accomplishments, but his philanthropy continued unabated. He pledged $100 million to what is now the University of Michigan’s A. Alfred Taubman Medical Research Institute. He also financed public-policy programs at Harvard, Brown and the University of Michigan, which received several large donations.

Mr. Taubman donated millions and spoke passionately in support of a 2008 ballot initiative in Michigan that eased restrictions on embryonic stem cell research and enabled his namesake institute to conduct major research for diseases.

He also served as president of the Detroit Arts Commission during a period of chronic financial problems for the city. At the Detroit Institute of Arts, Mr. Taubman’s knowledge of how shoppers negotiated malls was tapped to help reconfigure the flow of the museum.