Lynn Forester de Rothschild

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to: navigation, search

Lynn Forester, Lady de Rothschild (b. July 2, 1954 in New Jersey, U.S.)[1] is the chief executive officer of E.L. Rothschild, a holding company she owns with her third husband, Sir Evelyn Robert de Rothschild, a member of the Rothschild family.[1] The company manages investments in the British business magazine The Economist and various enterprises in India.[2] By virtue of her marriage to a knight, she is known socially as Lady de Rothschild.

Contents

   * 1 Career

* 2 Personal life
* 3 Politics
* 4 References
* 5 External links
Career
Raised in Oradell, New Jersey and daughter of John Kenneth Forester, president and owner of the General Aviation Company, now Meridian in Teterboro, N.J., she is a Phi Beta Kappa Magna Cum Laude graduate of Pomona College and an honors graduate of Columbia Law School. She also studied international law at the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva, Switzerland. From 1980-1984, she was an associate at the Simpson Thacher & Bartlett law firm.

Forester has stated that her first business success came at the age of 16 when she bought US made blue jeans and brought them to sell in Israel during her vacation there and sold them for up to ten times what they had originally cost her.[citation needed]

After meeting telecommunications billionaire John Kluge while doing legal work for him as a law firm associate, she became Executive Vice President for Development at Metromedia Inc from 1984-1989. Later, she became an entrepreneur in telecommunications and she acquired a personal fortune of over a hundred million dollars in the economic boom years between 1989 and 1998. She started with a 60% interest in TPI Communications Inc, a Puerto Rico based paging and cellular reselling business which was partly owned and financed by Motorola and managed by Forester. Before being sold, the company tripled its revenue and its cash flow grew to three times the US average. TPI was sold in a private transaction for an undisclosed sum in the mid-90s. In 1995, Forester formed FirstMark Communications Inc and received the first fixed wireless broadband licences for New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Boston. She sold this company for an undisclosed sum in 1997. In 1998, Forester founded the Luxembourg-based wireless broadband venture FirstMark Communications Europe, which acquired fixed broadband licences for Germany, Spain, France, Switzerland, Luxembourg and Finland and built a 20,000 km fiber network through-out continental Europe. Boasted on its Board of Directors Nathan Myhrvold of Microsoft, Washington D.C. power broker Vernon Jordan and Henry Kissinger. The company was sold in June 2000 in a $1 billion financing, the largest private equity placement in the history of the European competitive telecommunications sector. In discussing her personal business success between 1989 and 2000, Forester has said: "I think a lot of it is that I was lucky...most of all I learned that it's better to be lucky than to be smart."

Lady de Rothschild is also on the Board of Directors of Estée Lauder Companies and The Economist Group.

Personal life

Forester's first marriage, to Alexander Hartley Platt, a doctor's son from New Jersey, took place at Brick Presbyterian Church on May 20, 1978.[3]

Her second husband was[4] Andrew Stein, a New York politician and son of a multi-millionaire businessman, Jerry Finklestein. Stein is nine years older than Forester and was Manhattan Borough President at the time of their marriage. They wed on March 12, 1983,[5] and had two children, Ben and Jake. They were divorced in 1993.[6]

Forester was introduced to Sir Evelyn de Rothschild by Henry Kissinger at the 1998 Bilderberg Group conference in Scotland,[7] and they married on November 30, 2000 in London, England, after Rothschild (born into the fabulously wealthy European banking family and almost 23 years older than Forester) had left his wife and three children.[1] She is his third wife.[1] On the announcement of the marriage, the de Rothschild couple were invited to spend their honeymoon at the White House.[8] The couple splits their time between New York and London. In response to a reporter's question about her wealth, Forester said, “Is that said about me? I hope not. I mean, I’m just who I am. I don’t think being rich is that important. I think not being boring is really important.”

[edit] Politics

Lady de Rothschild was a major fund raiser for Hillary Rodham Clinton's 2008 Presidential bid and has received attention for endorsing John McCain for President. She has stepped down as a member of the Democratic National Committee platform committee.

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b c d Valynseele, Joseph; Henri-Claude Mars (2004). Le Sang des Rothschild. Paris: L’Intermédiaire des Chercheurs et Curieux. pp. 87. ISBN 2-908003-22-8. 

2. ^ Grove, Lloyd "World According to Lynn Forester de Rothschild" Condé Nast Portfolio.com (5 November 2007)
3. ^ "Lynn Forester Becomes Bride Of A.H. Platt". New York Times. 1978-05-21. http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F0081FFB355A11728DD.... Retrieved 2008-09-18.
4. ^ "Andrew J. Stein, Borough President, To Wed Lynn Forester Next Month". New York Times. 1983-01-16. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E07EEDB1038F935A257.... Retrieved 2008-09-18.
5. ^ "Andrew J. Stein Marries Lawyer". New York Times. 1983-03-13. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E04E6DB1439F930A257.... Retrieved 2008-09-18.
6. ^ Brozan, Nadine (1993-08-04). "Chronicle". New York Times. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F0CE5DA1339F937A357.... Retrieved 2008-09-18.
7. ^ Gerard, Jasper. "Interview: Jasper Gerard meets Lynn de Rothschild", The Times, July 27, 2003. Accessed September 23, 2008.
8. ^ 'I Love My Country Over My Party'
External links