Robert Louis-Dreyfus was a majority shareholder of the French football team Olympique de Marseille, and during his tenure they re-emerged as a major European football club.
18 Facts About Robert Louis-Dreyfus
2.
Robert Louis-Dreyfus was born in Paris, the son of Jean and Jeanne Madeline Louis-Dreyfus.
3.
Robert Louis-Dreyfus's father was Jewish and his mother Roman Catholic.
4.
Robert Louis-Dreyfus was a great-grandson of Leopold Louis-Dreyfus, founder of the Louis-Dreyfus Group, which had begun buying and selling wheat in the Alsace region a century earlier, and rapidly diversified into shipping, oil and other commodities.
5.
Robert Louis-Dreyfus's grandfather was Louis Louis-Dreyfus, who served in the French Parliament during the French Third Republic.
6.
Robert Louis-Dreyfus was initially a bad student who failed his Baccalaureat, but he excelled at poker, winning considerable amounts of money from his friends at the Lycee Janson de Sailly in Paris.
7.
Robert Louis-Dreyfus later secured a place at Harvard Business School with a presentation about his experiences during the war.
8.
Robert Louis-Dreyfus spent the early years of his working life mentored by Siegmund Warburg, in the family business of the Louis-Dreyfus Group.
9.
In 1982 Louis-Dreyfus joined IMS, the US pharmaceutical research company enjoying spectacular monetary success.
10.
Robert Louis-Dreyfus's original grew twentyfold by the time the company was sold in 1988.
11.
Robert Louis-Dreyfus invested his own money in Saatchi and Saatchi and during his tenure the agency grew considerably.
12.
Robert Louis-Dreyfus proved equally successful when in 1994 he took the top job at Adidas, the German-based sporting goods maker.
13.
Robert Louis-Dreyfus added to the brand by streamlining the product line and adding new companies to the group, including the Salomon ski-wear and golf company in 1997.
14.
Robert Louis-Dreyfus remained CEO of Adidas until 2001, combining this position with chairmanship of Neuf Telecom with whom he served until 2004.
15.
Robert Louis-Dreyfus re-joined the family company, Louis-Dreyfus Group, in May 2000, and restructured this major commodities trading and merchandising firm.
16.
In 1996 Robert Louis-Dreyfus became the largest shareholder of Olympique de Marseille, a French football team who had recently been rocked by a major match fixing scandal and subsequently relegated to the French second division as part of their punishment.
17.
Robert Louis-Dreyfus died in Zurich aged 63 on 4 July 2009, following a long period with leukemia.
18.
The American actress Julia Robert Louis-Dreyfus, famed for her role in the television comedy series Seinfeld, is his second cousin once removed.