Irwin Jacobs built a fortune as corporate raider, but spent a lifetime trading

Irwin Jacobs was a full-time, larger than life entrepreneur who built a fortune in the 1980s and bought and sold some of the country's largest companies.

But he began and ended his career as a trader of groceries and, for much of his six decades in business, became known as "Irv Liquidator."

Jacobs, 77, was found dead Wednesday next to his 57-year-old wife, Alexandra, in their Minnetonka home. A prolonged friend described his deaths as a suicide. The authorities stopped briefly to call it that, but said no suspects were sought.

Although faded in the past in recent years, for much of his career, Jacobs was a nationally known investor who found unknown value in companies and gained huge profits from short-term stock trading.

He said he had a fortune of over $ 200 million at some point in the 1[ads1]980s. During this decade, he took over and broke the AMF conglomerate and made failed takeover battles at several other major companies, including Disney, Kaiser and ITT. He owned a minority stake in the Minnesota Vikings.

With a series of agreements that began in the 1970s, Genmar Holdings Co. from the 1990s the nation's second largest boat user. The company was reduced after the 2008 recession and underwent a long-term bankruptcy reconstruction.

Jacobs in 1978 bought J.R. Watkins Co., Winona-based manufacturer of soaps and household items. His son Mark has led the company since the late 1990s.

At his death, Jacobs still owned his name industry, Jacobs Trading Co. In Hopkins, the successor to a male and his father Sam Jacobs started in the 1960s. [19659002] Sam Jacobs was a Russian immigrant who supported his northern Minneapolis family and collected used burlap bags, cleaning, recycling and selling them. Irwin Jacobs, who cleared bags in the school, came with her father on sales interviews while a student at North High School. "I was a peddler", Jacobs recalled years ago.

Among the uses of recycled jumping capacity: sandboxes in flood-prone areas. After working in flooded areas, the couple began trading the company to buy flood-damaged goods and resell them for profit.

But Irwin Jacobs had greater ambitions. In 1976, Carl Pohlad, the central Minneapolis bank, stabbed Jacobs to buy slumping Grain Belt Brewery in northeast Minneapolis. After concluding that he was unable to redeem it profitable, Jacobs closed the brewery, opposing statements he was in for a long time. He let off the labor, sold the equipment and the marks for an estimated $ 4 million profit.

He bought and liquidated the properties of the bankruptcy dealer WT Grant & Co. in the late 1970s.

Jacobs jumped to the cover of national business publications by celebrating a number of corporate CEOs and launching takeover attempts and celebrations against many companies. At 6-3 and 200 pounds with a full man with silver-striped dark hair, he had a swagger who could beat anxiety and anger in goals and competitors. But he also had an unknown ability to discover value.

Jacobs built Genmar from the ashes to several companies, including bankruptcy Larson Industries of Little Falls, Minn., Producer of Lund and Larson boats. In peak time, the company had more than $ 1 billion in annual sales, and Jacobs loved being photographed in fishing and speedboats such as the Commodore of Genmar.

The company went bankrupt in 2009 after the sale tumbled during the recession and it was "ten able to repay loans. The restructuring took several years and Jacobs called it" the most humiliating and painful experience of my business career. "

Jacobs lived big, drove a Rolls-Royce for years, flew aboard private jets and stayed with Alexandra in a 32-acre mansion next to Lake Minnetonka, with five children.

In recent years, Jacobs to enjoy his renewed focus on the Jacobs Trading liquidation business In 2011, he sold the business of Liquidity Services, a Washington DC-based good deal for $ 140 million, but Liquidity Services later lost an agreement with Walmart to resell returned or damaged goods and moved to scaling down.

In 2015, Jacobs Jacobs Trading bought the unit back to just $ 13 million, plus a share of future profits. ox company again, i'm sure of it, ”Jacobs told the Star Tribune in 2015.

Last year, Jacobs Star Tribune said he was excited about a Jacobs Trading unit, called Dock 1, it was created solely for peddling merchandise that had been returned to e-commerce firms.

"People looking for a bargain can find little electronics, toys, household items and seasonal goods," Jacobs said. "Everything in the drawers is $ 5 on Mondays, $ 4 on Tuesdays, $ 3 on Wednesdays, $ 2 on Thursdays and $ 1 on Fridays and Saturdays."