December’s obituaries from the worlds of business and economics include Hans Tietmeyer, who helped guide Europe’s currency conversion. Also among those who departed was America’s king of unclaimed luggage.
Hans Tietmeyer
The former Bundesbank president Hans Tietmeyer, last guardian of the German mark and one of the architects of Europe’s single currency, died on December 27. He was 85.
As the head of Germany’s central bank from 1993 to 1999, Tietmeyer preached price stability and earned a reputation as a fierce supporter of independent monetary-policy making – values the newly established European Central Bank would inherit in its work. After joining the Bundesbank in 1990, he advised then-chancellor Helmut Kohl on economic issues in the country’s reunification talks and helped lay the groundwork for 11 countries to adopt the euro in the first wave just months before the expiration of his term.
A lover of Beethoven and ping-pong, Tietmeyer contributed to designing the Stability and Growth Pact that still forms the basis for Europe’s common currency. His conviction that central banks should conduct their policies independently of politics affected Germany and its European neighbours alike.
Tietmeyer stood behind the Bundesbank’s position in 1992 to raise interest rates to record levels to rein in inflation, causing stress in currency markets that ultimately forced the British government to withdraw the pound from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism.
The euro never quite lived up to his expectations. He believed that a failure of governments to respect fiscal rules could create tensions between member states and undermine the currency. While he said in 2010 that there was no alternative to the euro, Tietmeyer advocated more cooperation and harmonisation across policy areas. He also opposed the idea of each country’s representative having one vote when the governing council sets interest rates for the euro zone.
As a young man Tietmeyer studied theology and considered becoming a Catholic priest, like two of his brothers. He eventually attained a doctorate in economics from the University of Cologne in 1961 and spent almost three decades working as a civil servant in the West German capital of Bonn.
His career began at the economy ministry, from which he rose to become deputy finance minister in Kohl’s government in 1982. For seven years, he was the point person for international economic relations. It was during that period, in September 1988, that Tietmeyer escaped an assassination attempt by a far-left militant group.
Walter Hachborn
He started out as a stockboy and built a hardware empire.
Walter Hachborn, who died on December 17 at age 95, made $8 a week when he started his career in 1938 stocking shelves at a hardware store in the Canadian town of St Jacobs, Ontario. A dozen years later, he owned the store, alongside his partners Henry Sittler and Arthur Zilliax.
One problem for small retailers at the time – a problem that continues today – is that they lacked the buying and marketing power of their bigger rivals. So in 1964 the St Jacobs trio decided to start a co-operative for independently owned and operated hardware stores.
“More than 1,000 hardware stores closed in Canada between 1955 and 1965 because they couldn’t compete with the mass merchandisers,” Hachborn told the Canadian Press news service in 1999. “I thought there had to be an answer.”
Today the Home Hardware coalition encompasses nearly 1,100 stores.
Hachborn retired from day-to-day operations in 1988 but retained the title of president emeritus until his death. He was made a member of the Order of Canada in 2000 and entered the Canadian Business Hall of Fame in 2014.
Beyond being shrewd, he was certainly personable.
“He’d always say Hi to me when he was walking down the street,” an area resident named Jason Voll tweeted out to Home Hardware. The company tweeted back: “He was such a friendly man, knew nearly all of our staff by name and greeted us all with a smile in the halls. He will be missed.”
Constantin Stroe
Constantin Stroe, a leading figure of Romania’s automobile manufacturing industry, died on December 17. He was 74.
He had been general manager of Autombile Dacia’s plant at Mioveni from 1990 to 2002. He had begun working at the plant in 1968.
France’s Renault bought Dacia in 1999 and in 2015, the plant sold 550,000 automobiles.
Stroe had been chairman of Romania’s Association of Automobile Manufacturers and on the board of the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association.
He was also active in the Romanian football club FC Arges, of which he was president in the 1990s. He resigned from the post after Renault withdrew its financial support for the club, but he remained on board as honorary president.
The Dacia chief executive Yves Caracatzanis said that Stroe “wrote the history of the Romanian automobile for 48 years.”
The Romanian premier Dacian Ciolos praised Stroe, saying that “due to his vision, Dacia is today one of the best sold and most respected auto brands in Europe.”
Bob Krasnow
A veteran music executive who rebuilt Elektra Records in the 1980s, Bob Krasnow died on December 11. He was 95.
After a youth spent in Los Angeles – much of it in record stores – and a stint in the US Navy, Krasnow worked at a variety of record companies in the 1950s through to the 1970s where he shepherded acts including the Grateful Dead, Captain Beefheart and Ike and Tina Turner. He had an eye for talent and a flair for marketing.
These would prove vital when he took over as president of Elektra in 1983. The once-grand label was a shambles, and many expected it to die. Krasnow ruthlessly cut acts and jobs, and moved the label’s base from Los Angeles to New York, its original home.
In its early glory days Elektra had been home to The Doors, The Eagles and Queen. But it had become bloated over time.
“I went through the roster with a hacksaw,” Krasnow told the Los Angeles Times in 1989. “It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out they needed to get rid of most of those acts and start over.”
The artists whom he brought on board to revive Elektra covered a wide range of modern music, from Tracy Chapman and the Pixies to Motley Crue and 10,000 Maniacs.
Krasnow was also one of the co-founders of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Doyle Owens
He sold things to people to whom those items did not belong – and made that business into a tourist attraction.
Doyle Owens, who died on December 3 at age 85, was an insurance salesman in Washington, DC in the 1970s when he got his big opportunity in life. A friend who worked for a bus company told him that it was stuck with piles of luggage that passengers had not bothered to collect.
He bought the bags for $300, piled them into a pickup truck and, with the help of his wife, Mollie Sue, sold the lot in one day. He kept buying more and more of the leftovers, and expanded into airlines’ unclaimed baggage. In time he set up shop in Scottsboro, Alabama, where airline passengers’ unclaimed luggage is shipped to his store by the truckload. Visitors love to sift through the mounds of flotsam, never knowing what they might find. Among the things that have turned up over the years are a suit of armour, a snakeskin, a rattlesnake and ancient Egyptian relics. More common are laptops and wedding gowns.
"This is just American ingenuity," Brett Snyder, who runs the air-travel blog Cranky Flier, told The New York Times. "Finding a niche opportunity and putting it to use."
Jack Rudin
Jack Rudin, the leader of a New York real estate dynasty and patriarch of one of America’s wealthiest families, died on December 4. He was 92.
The chairman of Rudin Management headed a family whose role in New York real estate traces its roots to the purchase of a single property on East 54th Street in 1905. Today it is among the largest private landlords in the city and owns 16 office properties, including 80 Pine St, which occupies a full block near the New York Stock Exchange.
The family was the 61st wealthiest clan in the US as of 2015, according to Forbes. Rudin presided over the empire with his brother, Lewis Rudin, until the younger sibling died in 2001. Jack Rudin oversaw construction and development, while Lewis Rudin was the public face of the company and its rental agent.
The Rudin family got into New York real estate 111 years ago when Rudin’s grandfather, Louis Rudinsky, a Polish immigrant, bought a building at 153 East 54th Street. Today, it remains in the family’s portfolio along with several surrounding properties. Samuel Rudin and his brothers created Rudin Management in the early 1920s and turned it over to their sons in the 1970s.
Jack Rudin oversaw the construction and design of many commercial and residential buildings including 345 Park Avenue, 1 Battery Park Plaza and 3 Times Square.
In the 1970s, he was one of a group of real estate executives who rallied their industry to prepay their property taxes to help the city avoid bankruptcy.
Rudin’s philanthropy included sponsorship, with his brother, of the New York City Marathon, which named its trophy after Samuel Rudin, a long-distance runner. In the 1970s, the Rudin family helped move the race out of Central Park and onto the streets of the five boroughs that constitute New York City.
Edward Kelley
Edward “Mike” Kelley Jr, who served 14 years as a member of the Federal Reserve Board and was instrumental in modernising the banking operations of the Federal Reserve system, died on December 4. He was 84.
For many years Kelley ran a Houston manufacturing and services company. President Ronald Reagan appointed him to the seven-member Fed board in 1987. He was reappointed by president George HW Bush in 1990.
During much of his tenure on the board, Kelley chaired the committee that oversaw the operations and payment systems of the Fed’s 12 regional banks. In that role, he led efforts to modernise the Fed’s computer systems and prepare for a smooth transition during the century date change in January 2000.
In October 2005, the Houston branch building of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas was named in his honour. Speaking at the dedication ceremony, then-Fed chairman Alan Greenspan called Kelley “my friend, confidant and golf partner’. He said Kelley’s work to get the Fed system prepared for the Y-2K computer change greatly contributed to the success the Fed had in operating in crisis mode following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Mr Greenspan said Kelley was instrumental in increasing the efficiency of Fed operations by modernising the way its regional banks coordinated the handling of services to commercial banks.
* Agencies and The National
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