Lewis GlucksmanLewis Glucksman, who died in his Cork home at the age of 80 on July 5th, 2006, was a New Yorker of Hungarian-Jewish extraction. He was best known in Ireland as a philanthropist and patron of the arts, along with his wife Loretta Brennan Glucksman. Their generosity bears comparison with that of Sir Alfred Chester Beatty and Sir Alfred and Lady Beit, who - like them - made Ireland their adopted home.
In his native country, Lew Glucksman was better known as a successful trader, businessman and financier. He was a prime mover in the bloody succession wars at Wall Street investment bankers Lehman Brothers. In The Fall of the House of Lehman, author Ken Auleta tells how what began as a dry goods and cotton trading business in Alabama became a major dealmaker on the New York stock exchange.
When the last Lehman died in 1969, there was a vacuum at the top and huge sums at stake. Peter G Peterson, who served as Richard Nixon's commerce secretary, and Lewis L Glucksman, a very ambitious Lehman securities trader, locked horns. Peterson, appointed chairman of Lehman soon after he arrived at the firm, was an egocentric and aloof man. Glucksman was by contrast a plain-talking, volatile Jewish trader who chomped cigars and whose wide ties bore soup stains - if his Wasp critics were to be believed.
There was only one question on money-mad Wall Street: "Who gets the buck?", as lawyer Abraham Pomerantz put it to a US senate subcommittee. Peterson wanted to sell up and get the buck. Glucksman wanted Lehman to stay independent, and he won. He reckoned the banking side of Lehman had too much influence, and a purge ensued in which the market traders came out on top. Peterson in exile took his revenge. He forced Glucksman to tell the board about a potential buyer offering $600 million.
The partners smelled cash - lots of it. A few well-placed press leaks later and Lehman Bros was "in play". "Glucksman was reduced to negotiating, from weakness, the best price he could [ get] for a firm he never wanted to sell," journalist Lawrence Minard noted. In May 1984, months before a huge surge began on the stock exchange, American Express bought Lehman Bros for $380 million including fees. Glucksman's share was $15.6 million.
Around that time his second wife Loretta Brennan Glucksman recalls meeting "a very savvy Jewish guy from Wall Street raving to me - the Irish Catholic third generation - about Ireland, and I had never been [ there]." So they went. They returned a second time after he offered New York University (NYU) a centre for Irish studies. "Later, Glucksman Ireland House was established at NYU. I think the name is hilarious - an Ireland house with a Hungarian-Jewish name," she told journalist Sue Leonard in 2001.
They established a home in Ireland, first in Limerick, later in Cork, and applied their energies to fundraising and philanthropic projects, using their financial resources and a network of wealthy and influential contacts. Projects supported include the Glucksman library at University of Limerick, the Glucksman map library at Trinity College Dublin, the Lewis Glucksman art gallery at University College Cork and the Millennium wing at the National Gallery of Ireland, among others.
Glucksman received an honorary doctorate from the National University of Ireland in 2002. In 2005 his wife Loretta, chairwoman of the American Ireland Fund, was awarded an honorary fellowship by the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland.
Lewis Glucksman served as a trustee of NYU, as a member of the advisory committee of the National Treasury Management Agency and as chairman of the Cork University Foundation.
He is survived by his wife Loretta, two children and three stepchildren.
Lewis Glucksman, born December 22nd, 1925; died July 5th, 2006