Cornelius Vander Starr
Cornelius Vander Starr known as Neil Starr or C. V. Starr was an American businessman and operative of the Office of Strategic Services, the predecessor of the CIA, best known for founding, in 1919, C. V. Starr & Co. in Shanghai, China. Starr's "hand-picked successor" was Maurice Greenberg, who took a lead role in forming AIG as a Starr subsidiary. AIG grew from an initial market value of $300 million to $180 billion, becoming the largest insurance company in the world. Starr was born to parents of Dutch ancestry, his father was a railroad engineer. Starr attended University of California, Berkeley from 1910 to 1911 before dropping out and returning to his hometown of Ft. Bragg, CA. There he began his first business venture, at the age of nineteen, he joined the U. S. Army in 1918 but was never deployed overseas because World War. Unable to resist a strong urge to travel and understand the world, he joined the Pacific Mail Steamship Company as a clerk in Yokohama, Japan; that year, he traveled to Shanghai where he worked for several insurance businesses.
In 1919 he founded what was known as American Asiatic Underwriters in Shanghai, China, a global insurance and investment organization. He had long been aware of the described and looming "Chinese Century", it has been reported that he worked for the Office of Strategic Services during World War II while in China. He was forced to move his operation to New York in 1939. In 2000, Mark Fritz wrote in the article entitled The Secret Agent Men for the Los Angeles Times: "They knew which factories to burn, which bridges to blow up, which cargo ships could be sunk in good conscience, they had pothole counts for roads used for invasion and head counts for city blocks marked for incineration. They weren't just secret agents, they were secret insurance agents. These undercover underwriters gave their World War II spymasters access to a global industry that both bankrolled and helped bring down Adolf Hitler's Third Reich. Newly declassified U. S. intelligence files tell the remarkable story of the ultra-secret Insurance Intelligence Unit, a component of the Office of Strategic Services, a forerunner of the CIA, its elite counterintelligence branch X-2.
After World War II, he hired O. S. S. Captain Duncan Lee, a lawyer, the long-term general counsel of AIG. AIG left China in early 1949, as Mao Zedong led the advance of the Communist People's Liberation Army on Shanghai, Starr moved the company headquarters to its current home in New York City. AIG was once the world's largest insurance company. In 1955 he founded the C. V. Starr Foundation, to which he left his entire residuary estate, after a small amount in the eight figures along with his house in Brewster was awarded to his niece upon his death in 1968, he set up several other trusts for his close relatives. The sum of money left to his niece and relatives would have been worth several billion USD in the 21st century; as of 2013 the C. V. Starr Foundation still gives between 100 and 200 million dollars USD annually to charities and causes around the world respectively; the C. V. Starr East Asian Library at Columbia University was named for Starr in recognition of an endowment gift by the Starr Foundation in 1981.
The C. V. Starr East Asian Library at the University of Illinois. There is the C. V. Starr East Asian Library at the University of California, which houses 900,000 volumes in Chinese, Japanese and other East Asian languages, making it one of the top two such collections in the United States outside of the Library of Congress. Students at Hofstra University will know C. V. Starr Hall as home to the Frank G. Zarb School of Business, a state-of-the-art technologically advanced building, which opened for classes in the fall of 2000 and houses the Martin B. Greenberg Trading Room complete with a stock ticker, delayed only 15 minutes from Wall Street; the C. V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience in Chestertown, MD, works in conjunction with Washington College to promote the American Pictures Series at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington D. C. Starr was an early investor in skiing at Mount Mansfield in Stowe, acquiring the Stowe Mountain Resort in 1949, it passed on to AIG in 1988.
An On-line Exhibition: Cornelius Vander Starr, his life and work: https://exhibitions.library.columbia.edu/exhibits/show/cvstarr / exhibit curator, Ria Koopmans-de Bruijn / Published New York, N. Y.: C. V. Starr East Asian Library; the Starr Foundation For information about Cornelius Vander Starr. C. V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience
Board of directors
A board of directors is a group of people who jointly supervise the activities of an organization, which can be either a for-profit business, nonprofit organization, or a government agency. Such a board's powers and responsibilities are determined by government regulations and the organization's own constitution and bylaws; these authorities may specify the number of members of the board, how they are to be chosen, how they are to meet. In an organization with voting members, the board is accountable to, might be subordinate to, the organization's full membership, which vote for the members of the board. In a stock corporation, non-executive directors are voted for by the shareholders, with the board having ultimate responsibility for the management of the corporation; the board of directors appoints the chief executive officer of the corporation and sets out the overall strategic direction. In corporations with dispersed ownership, the identification and nomination of directors are done by the board itself, leading to a high degree of self-perpetuation.
In a non-stock corporation with no general voting membership, the board is the supreme governing body of the institution, its members are sometimes chosen by the board itself. Other names include board of directors and advisors, board of governors, board of managers, board of regents, board of trustees, or board of visitors, it may be called "the executive board" and is simply referred to as "the board". Typical duties of boards of directors include: governing the organization by establishing broad policies and setting out strategic objectives. For companies with publicly trading stock, these responsibilities are much more rigorous and complex than for those of other types; the board chooses one of its members to be the chairman, who holds whatever title is specified in the by-laws or articles of association. However, in membership organizations, the members elect the president of the organization and the president becomes the board chair, unless the by-laws say otherwise; the directors of an organization are the persons.
Several specific terms categorize directors by the presence or absence of their other relationships to the organization. An inside director is a director, an employee, chief executive, major shareholder, or someone connected to the organization. Inside directors represent the interests of the entity's stakeholders, have special knowledge of its inner workings, its financial or market position, so on. Typical inside directors are: A chief executive officer who may be chairman of the board Other executives of the organization, such as its chief financial officer or executive vice president Large shareholders Representatives of other stakeholders such as labor unions, major lenders, or members of the community in which the organization is locatedAn inside director, employed as a manager or executive of the organization is sometimes referred to as an executive director. Executive directors have a specified area of responsibility in the organization, such as finance, human resources, or production.
An outside director is a member of the board, not otherwise employed by or engaged with the organization, does not represent any of its stakeholders. A typical example is a director, president of a firm in a different industry. Outside directors are not affiliated with it in any other way. Outside directors bring outside experience and perspectives to the board. For example, for a company that only serves a domestic market, the presence of CEOs from global multinational corporations as outside directors can help to provide insights on export and import opportunities and international trade options. One of the arguments for having outside directors is that they can keep a watchful eye on the inside directors and on the way the organization is run. Outside directors are unlikely to tolerate "insider dealing" between insider directors, as outside directors do not benefit from the company or organization. Outside directors are useful in handling disputes between inside directors, or between shareholders and the board.
They are thought to be advantageous because they can be objective and present little risk of conflict of interest. On the other hand, they might lack familiarity with the specific issues connected to the organization's governance and they might not know about the industry or sector in which the organization is operating. Director – a person appointed to serve on the board of an organization, such as an institution or business. Inside director – a director who, in addition to serving on the board, has a meaningful connection to the organization Outside director – a director who, other than serving on the board, has no meaningful connections to the organization Executive director – an insi
Airbus
Airbus SE, from 2000 to 2014 known as the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company, is a European multinational aerospace corporation, registered in the Netherlands and trading shares in France and Spain. It designs and sells civil and military aerospace products worldwide and manufactures in the European Union and various other countries; the company has three divisions: Commercial Aircraft and Space, Helicopters, the third being the largest in its industry in terms of revenues and turbine helicopter deliveries. The company's main civil aeroplane business is based in Blagnac, France, a suburb of Toulouse, with production and manufacturing facilities in the European Union but in China and the United States. Final assembly production is based in France; the company produces and markets the first commercially viable digital fly-by-wire airliner, the Airbus A320, the world's largest passenger airliner, the A380. The 10,000th aircraft, an A350, was delivered to Singapore Airlines on 14 October 2016.
The global Airbus fleet have performed more than 110 million flights, totaling over 215 billion kilometres and carrying 12 billion passengers. Airbus's corporate headquarters is located in Leiden and the main office is located in Toulouse, France; the company is led by CEO Guillaume Faury and is a component of the Euro Stoxx 50 stock market index. The current company is the product of consolidation in the European aerospace industry tracing back to the formation of the Airbus Industrie GIE consortium in 1970. In 2000, the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company NV was established. In addition to other subsidiaries pertaining to security and space activities, EADS owned 100% of the pre-existing Eurocopter SA, established in 1992, as well as 80% of Airbus Industrie GIE. In 2001, Airbus Industrie GIE was reorganised as a simplified joint-stock company. In 2006, EADS acquired. EADS NV was renamed Airbus Group NV and SE in 2014, 2015, respectively. Due to the dominance of the Airbus SAS division within Airbus Group SE, these parent and subsidiary companies were merged in January 2017, keeping the name of the parent company.
The company was given its present name in April 2017. The logos of Airbus Industrie GIE and Airbus SAS displayed a stylised turbine symbol, redolent of a jet engine, a font similar to Helvetica Black; the logo colours were reflected in the standard Airbus aircraft livery in each period. The EADS logo between 2000 and 2010 combined the logos of the merged companies, DaimlerChrysler Aerospace AG and Aérospatiale-Matra, after which these elements were removed and a new font with 3D shading was chosen; this font was retained in the logos of Airbus Group NV and Airbus Group SE Airbus SE: The Airbus product line started with the A300, the world's first twin-aisle, twin-engined aircraft. A shorter, re-winged, re-engined variant of the A300 is known as the A310. Building on its success, Airbus launched the A320 notable for being the first commercial jet to use a fly-by-wire control system; the A320 has been, continues to be, a great commercial success. The A318 and A319 are shorter derivatives with some of the latter under construction for the corporate business jet market as Airbus Corporate Jets.
A stretched version is known as the A321. The A320 family's primary competitor is the Boeing 737 family; the longer-range widebody products— the twin-jet A330 and the four-engine A340— have efficient wings, enhanced by winglets. The Airbus A340-500 has an operating range of 16,700 kilometres, the second longest range of any commercial jet after the Boeing 777-200LR. All Airbus aircraft developed since have cockpit systems similar to the A320, making it easier to train crew. Production of the four-engine A340 was ended in 2011 due to lack of sales compared to its twin-engine counterparts, such as the Boeing 777. Airbus is studying a replacement for the A320 series, tentatively dubbed NSR, for "New Short-Range aircraft"; those studies indicated a maximum fuel efficiency gain of 9–10% for the NSR. Airbus however opted to enhance the existing A320 design using new winglets and working on aerodynamical improvements; this "A320 Enhanced" should have a fuel efficiency improvement of around 4–5%, shifting the launch of an A320 replacement to 2017–2018.
On 24 September 2009, the COO Fabrice Bregier stated to Le Figaro that the company would need from €800 million to €1 billion over six years to develop the new aircraft generation and preserve the company technological lead from new competitors like the Chinese Comac C919, scheduled to operate by 2015–2020. In July 2007, Airbus delivered its last A300 to FedEx, marking the end of the A300/A310 production line. Airbus intends to relocate Toulouse A320 final assembly activity to Hamburg, A350/A380 production in the opposite direction as part of its Power8 organisation plan begun under ex-CEO Christian Streiff. Airbus supplied replacement parts and service for Concorde until its retirement in 2003; the Airbus Corporate Jets modifies new aircraft for private and corporate customers. It has a model range that parallels the commercial aircraft offered by the company, ranging from the A318 Elite to the double-deck Airbus A380 Prestige. Following the entry of the 737 based Boeing Business Jet, Airbus joined the business jet market with the A319 Corporate Jet in 1997.
Although the term Airbus Corporate jet was used only for the A319CJ, it is now us
Pacific Life
Pacific Life Insurance Company is an American insurance company providing life insurance products and mutual funds, offers a variety of investment products and services to individuals and pension plans. Pacific Life counts more than half of the 100 largest U. S. companies as clients. They have over 15,600 agents licensed to sell insurance, just in the state of California. Pacific Mutual Life was founded in 1868 by former California Governor Leland Stanford in Sacramento, California. Stanford was the first policy holder of the company. After Stanford died and his university was strapped for money, his wife used the money from the policy to pay for professors. Starting in 1885, Pacific Mutual Life began issuing accident insurance, an innovative move for a life insurance company at the time. In 1906, Pacific Mutual Life merged with Conservative Life, a Los Angeles-based life insurance company. Following the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, Pacific Mutual Life's board of directors moved the company to Los Angeles.
Since 2005, the company is domiciled in the state of Nebraska. During the Great Depression, the company was hit with hard times and in 1936 in an effort to save both the policy holders and the company the insurance commissioner, Samuel L. Carpenter, encouraged the policy holders to become part owners of the company through mutualization. In 1955, Pacific Mutual Life became the first company west of the Mississippi River to use the brand new technology of Univac I. At Pacific Mutual Life's one-hundredth birthday the company celebrated with keynote speaker Ronald Reagan. In 1971, the company started Pacific Investment Management Company; the company moved its headquarters to their current Newport Beach, California location in 1972 when management decided that Newport Beach would provide a higher standard of living for their families. In 1997, the company dropped mutual from its name; this reflects the company structure's change from a mutual ownership to a mutual holding company structure. In 1997, the company adopted the humpback whale as symbol of the company because of the whale's persistence and strength.
On May 30, 2007, Pacific Asset Management was created. Pacific Asset Management offers institutional fixed income management. Pacific Asset Management focuses on credit oriented fixed income. Pacific Asset Management's investment team manages bank loans, high yield corporate bonds, investment grade bonds and money market securities. Pacific Asset Management provides their clients the ability to invest with an entrepreneurial, boutique investment group focused on fundamental credit analysis and supported by the scale and infrastructure of Pacific Life. Pacific Asset Management manage registered investment companies under the Investment Company Act of 1940 as well as separate accounts; the Pacific Life Foundation was established in 1984 and is headquartered in Newport Beach, CA. At year-end 2011, the Foundation's trust principal was $63.5 million. In 2011, $5.5 million was contributed to over 400 agencies in the areas of health and human services. In 2017, Pacific Life launched a subsidiary focused purely on impact investing.
Aviation Capital Group LLC owns and leases commercial jet aircraft internationally, offers aircraft asset management services. Headquartered in Newport Beach, the company owned and managed 439 aircraft leased to 95 airlines in 45 countries by the end of 2017; the company was founded in 1989. Pacific Life official site
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American newspaper based in New York City with worldwide influence and readership. Founded in 1851, the paper has won more than any other newspaper; the Times is ranked 17th in the world by circulation and 2nd in the U. S; the paper is owned by The New York Times Company, publicly traded and is controlled by the Sulzberger family through a dual-class share structure. It has been owned by the family since 1896. G. Sulzberger, the paper's publisher, his father, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr. the company's chairman, are the fourth and fifth generation of the family to helm the paper. Nicknamed "The Gray Lady", the Times has long been regarded within the industry as a national "newspaper of record"; the paper's motto, "All the News That's Fit to Print", appears in the upper left-hand corner of the front page. Since the mid-1970s, The New York Times has expanded its layout and organization, adding special weekly sections on various topics supplementing the regular news, editorials and features.
Since 2008, the Times has been organized into the following sections: News, Editorials/Opinions-Columns/Op-Ed, New York, Sports of The Times, Science, Home and other features. On Sunday, the Times is supplemented by the Sunday Review, The New York Times Book Review, The New York Times Magazine and T: The New York Times Style Magazine; the Times stayed with the broadsheet full-page set-up and an eight-column format for several years after most papers switched to six, was one of the last newspapers to adopt color photography on the front page. The New York Times was founded as the New-York Daily Times on September 18, 1851. Founded by journalist and politician Henry Jarvis Raymond and former banker George Jones, the Times was published by Raymond, Jones & Company. Early investors in the company included Edwin B. Morgan, Christopher Morgan, Edward B. Wesley. Sold for a penny, the inaugural edition attempted to address various speculations on its purpose and positions that preceded its release: We shall be Conservative, in all cases where we think Conservatism essential to the public good.
We do not believe that everything in Society is either right or wrong. In 1852, the newspaper started a western division, The Times of California, which arrived whenever a mail boat from New York docked in California. However, the effort failed. On September 14, 1857, the newspaper shortened its name to The New-York Times. On April 21, 1861, The New York Times began publishing a Sunday edition to offer daily coverage of the Civil War. One of the earliest public controversies it was involved with was the Mortara Affair, the subject of twenty editorials in the Times alone; the main office of The New York Times was attacked during the New York City Draft Riots. The riots, sparked by the beginning of drafting for the Union Army, began on July 13, 1863. On "Newspaper Row", across from City Hall, Henry Raymond stopped the rioters with Gatling guns, early machine guns, one of which he manned himself; the mob diverted, instead attacking the headquarters of abolitionist publisher Horace Greeley's New York Tribune until being forced to flee by the Brooklyn City Police, who had crossed the East River to help the Manhattan authorities.
In 1869, Henry Raymond died, George Jones took over as publisher. The newspaper's influence grew in 1870 and 1871, when it published a series of exposés on William Tweed, leader of the city's Democratic Party—popularly known as "Tammany Hall" —that led to the end of the Tweed Ring's domination of New York's City Hall. Tweed had offered The New York Times five million dollars to not publish the story. In the 1880s, The New York Times transitioned from supporting Republican Party candidates in its editorials to becoming more politically independent and analytical. In 1884, the paper supported Democrat Grover Cleveland in his first presidential campaign. While this move cost The New York Times a portion of its readership among its more progressive and Republican readers, the paper regained most of its lost ground within a few years. After George Jones died in 1891, Charles Ransom Miller and other New York Times editors raised $1 million dollars to buy the Times, printing it under the New York Times Publishing Company.
However, the newspaper was financially crippled by the Panic of 1893, by 1896, the newspaper had a circulation of less than 9,000, was losing $1,000 a day. That year, Adolph Ochs, the publisher of the Chattanooga Times, gained a controlling interest in the company for $75,000. Shortly after assuming control of the paper, Ochs coined the paper's slogan, "All The News That's Fit To Print"; the slogan has appeared in the paper since September 1896, has been printed in a box in the upper left hand corner of the front page since early 1897. The slogan was a jab at competing papers, such as Joseph Pulitzer's New York World and William Randolph Hearst's New York Journal, which were known for a lurid and inaccurate reporting of facts and opinions, described by the end of the century as "yellow journalism". Under Ochs' guidance, aided by Carr
Constellation Place
Constellation Place is a 35-story, 492-foot skyscraper in the Los Angeles, California community of Century City. It houses the headquarters of Houlihan Lokey, ICM Partners, International Lease Finance Corporation, it once housed the corporate headquarters of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, but MGM moved to Beverly Hills, California after August 19, 2011. Constellation Place was constructed from 2001 to 2003, it is 26th-tallest building in Los Angeles, the 5th-tallest in Century City. It was the first high-rise to be completed in the 21st century in Los Angeles; the building was designed by Johnson Fain Partners, has 700,000 sq ft of Class A office space. Before August 19, 2011, the headquarters were in the MGM Tower in Los Angeles. Halfway through the design building process of what would become the MGM Tower, MGM agreed to be the lead tenant. In 2000 MGM announced that it was moving its headquarters to a newly constructed building in Century City; the building opened in 2003. In 2010, as MGM emerged from bankruptcy protection, it announced that it planned to move the headquarters to Beverly Hills, California so the company could remove around $5 billion in debt.
The lease in Century City was scheduled to expire in 2018. Vincent and Eller said that MGM's per square foot monthly rent would be far lower in the Beverly Hills building than in the MGM Tower. Larry Kozmont, a real estate consultant not involved in the move, said "It's a prudent move for them. Downsizing and relocating to a space, still prominent but not overly ostentatious and burdened by expenses is fundamental for their survival." ICM Partners has its headquarters on the five renovated top floors of the building. Alex Yemenidjian, a former chairperson and chief executive of MGM, devised the headquarters space. Roger Vincent and Claudia Eller of the Los Angeles Times said that "Yemenidjian spared no expense in building out the studio's space with such Las Vegas-style flourishes as towering marble pillars and a grand spiral staircase lined with a wall of awards."Scott Johnson, the architect, designed the bottom third of the tower to have extra-large floors so MGM executives could have outdoor decks.
The marble used in the MGM spaces was imported from Italy. MGM received a dedicated private garage, a dedicated security checkpoint, a dedicated elevator bank; that way, celebrities who visited the complex could enter and exit the building without entering public spaces. Three screening rooms were placed in the tower. One of them was a 100-seat theater on the ground floor; as of December 2010 ICM Partners controls the theater. The 14th floor lobby housed the executive suites and a wall of Oscar statuettes for Academy Award-winning films; the street that leads to the building's garage was renamed MGM Drive. A large MGM logo was placed at the top of the building. In December 2010 MGM rented 200,000 sq ft of space in the MGM Tower, it paid nearly $5 per square foot per month in rent; as of 2012 it was noted as the first high-rise in Los Angeles to use electricity-generating fuel cells, called Bloom Energy Servers, as a source of power. The cells, which rely on hydrocarbons such as natural gas to generate power, may produce up to 400 kilowatts of power, which would supply one third of the electricity used to power the building.
Houlihan Lokey headquarters – 4th, 5th, 6th Floors ICM Partners corporate headquarters International Lease Finance Corporation corporate headquarters - Suite 3400 Fortress Investment Group – 16th floor Macquarie Group – Suite 2250 List of tallest buildings in Los Angeles Official website
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. is an American media company, involved in the production and distribution of feature films and television programs. One of the world's oldest film studios, MGM's headquarters are located at 245 North Beverly Drive in Beverly Hills, California. MGM was founded in 1924 when the entertainment entrepreneur Marcus Loew gained control of Metro Pictures, Goldwyn Pictures, Louis B. Mayer Pictures. In 1971, it was announced that MGM was to merge with 20th Century Fox, but the plan never came to fruition. Over the next 39 years, the studio was bought and sold at various points in its history until, on November 3, 2010, MGM filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. MGM emerged from bankruptcy on December 20, 2010, at which time the executives of Spyglass Entertainment, Gary Barber and Roger Birnbaum, became co-chairmen and co-CEOs of the holding company of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer; as of 2017, MGM co-produces, co-finances, co-distributes a majority of its films with Sony Pictures, Paramount Pictures and Warner Bros.
MGM Resorts International, a Las Vegas-based hotel and casino company listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol "MGM", was created in 1973 as a division of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The company was spun out in 1979, with the studio's owner Kirk Kerkorian maintaining a large share, but it ended all affiliation with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1986. MGM was the last studio to convert to sound pictures, but in spite of this fact, from the end of the silent film era through the late 1950s, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer was the dominant motion picture studio in Hollywood. Always slow to respond to the changing legal and demographic nature of the motion picture industry during the 1950s and 1960s, although at times its films did well at the box office, the studio lost significant amounts of money throughout the 1960s. In 1966, MGM was sold to Canadian investor Edgar Bronfman Sr. whose son Edgar Jr. would buy Universal Studios. Three years an unprofitable MGM was bought by Kirk Kerkorian, who slashed staff and production costs, forced the studio to produce low-budget fare, shut down theatrical distribution in 1973.
The studio continued to produce five to six films a year that were released through other studios United Artists. Kerkorian did, commit to increased production and an expanded film library when he bought United Artists in 1981. MGM ramped up internal production, as well as keeping production going at UA, which included the lucrative James Bond film franchise, it incurred significant amounts of debt to increase production. The studio took on additional debt as a series of owners took charge in early 1990s. In 1986, Ted Turner bought MGM, but a few months sold the company back to Kerkorian to recoup massive debt, while keeping the library assets for himself; the series of deals left MGM more in debt. MGM was bought by Pathé Communications in 1990, but Parretti lost control of Pathé and defaulted on the loans used to purchase the studio; the French banking conglomerate Crédit Lyonnais, the studio's major creditor took control of MGM. More in debt, MGM was purchased by a joint venture between Kerkorian, producer Frank Mancuso, Australia's Seven Network in 1996.
The debt load from these and subsequent business deals negatively affected MGM's ability to survive as a separate motion picture studio. After a bidding war which included Time Warner and General Electric, MGM was acquired on September 23, 2004, by a partnership consisting of Sony Corporation of America, Texas Pacific Group, Providence Equity Partners, other investors. In 1924, movie theater magnate Marcus Loew had a problem, he had bought Metro Pictures Corporation in 1919 for a steady supply of films for his large Loew's Theatres chain. With Loew's lackluster assortment of Metro films, Loew purchased Goldwyn Pictures in 1924 to improve the quality. However, these purchases created a need for someone to oversee his new Hollywood operations, since longtime assistant Nicholas Schenck was needed in New York headquarters to oversee the 150 theaters. Approached by Louis B. Mayer, Loew addressed the situation by buying Louis B. Mayer Pictures on April 17, 1924. Mayer became head of the renamed Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, with Irving Thalberg as head of production.
MGM produced more than 100 feature films in its first two years. In 1925, MGM released the extravagant and successful Ben-Hur, taking a $4.7 million profit that year, its first full year. In 1925, MGM, Paramount Pictures and UFA formed a joint German distributor, Parufamet; when Samuel Goldwyn left he sued over the use of his name. Marcus Loew died in 1927, control of Loew's passed to Nicholas Schenck. In 1929, William Fox of Fox Film Corporation bought the Loew family's holdings with Schenck's assent. Mayer and Thalberg disagreed with the decision. Mayer was active in the California Republican Party and used his political connections to persuade the Justice Department to delay final approval of the deal on antitrust grounds. During this time, in the summer of 1929, Fox was badly hurt in an automobile accident. By the time he recovered, the stock market crash in the fall of 1929 had nearly wiped Fox out and ended any chance of the Loew's merger going through. Schenck and Mayer had never gotten along, the abortive Fox merger increased the animosity between the two men.
From the outset, MGM tapped into the audience's need for sophistication. Having inherited few big names from their predecessor companies and Thalberg began at once
US$4.73 billion (2007)
