Even his critics had to concede, however, that he was probably the most effective civic leader Los Angeles had seen since Dorothy Chandler, a remarkable achievement for a transplanted Midwesterner with no family ties to his adopted city. “There’s no curtain you can’t get through in Los Angeles — no religious curtain, no curtain about where you came from,” Mr. Broad told The New York Times in 2001. The Kaufman & Broad Building Company soon expanded to Phoenix and Los Angeles, where Mr. Broad moved in 1964. In 1971, the company diversified, spending $52 million for a sleepy Baltimore insurance company, Sun Life, which became a powerhouse when Mr. Broad focused on selling annuities and financial planning services to baby boomers. Renamed Sun America in 1993, it was sold to the American International Group, the insurance giant, in 1998 for $18 billion, netting Mr. Broad more than $3 billion.

Source: New York Times May 01, 2021 00:44 UTC