He was a school dropout at 14 and homeless for a spell, but as a driven investor and chief of Dole he became a billionaire. Later came another quest: to extend life through better nutrition.
David H. Murdock, who rose from hardscrabble beginnings to become a billionaire investor, real estate mogul, corporate raider and philanthropist, and whose late-in-life devotion to healthy nutrition led him to announce that he planned to live to 125, died on Monday at his ranch in the Southern California city of Thousand Oaks. He was 102.
His death was confirmed by Tracy Murdock, one of his former wives.
Mr. Murdock, who dropped out of school at 14 and was briefly a homeless veteran of World War II, made his first fortune in real estate and then acquired controlling stakes in a variety of public companies, including the Dole Food Company and the textile manufacturer Cannon Mills.
He gained a reputation as a relentless and often ruthless turnaround specialist who didn’t hesitate to lay off thousands of workers, slash benefits and make deep cuts in order to reshape and sell a company. He would look for companies with what he deemed “undervalued assets,” swoop in, make necessary if painful changes and then sell the entity at a significant profit.
In his oft-stated quest to build the largest private financial empire in the United States, Mr. Murdock took on powerful unions and dominant corporate chieftains, among them Armand Hammer of Occidental Petroleum, and emerged as one of the richest, most successful corporate investors in the nation. In April, Forbes estimated his fortune at $3.7 billion.
Mr. Murdock’s lack of formal education and humble beginnings fueled his determined rise to wealth and power. In a 1983 interview with The Wall Street Journal, he said: “Nobody is satisfied with what he has. We were brought on earth to achieve. As long as we want to achieve, we’re alive. If we’re satisfied, we’re already half dead.”
Well into his 90s, he continued to achieve, serving as chairman and chief executive of Dole and its parent company, Castle & Cooke, for several decades.
