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By Dan McCue
SCBIZ Daily Staff
CHARLESTON — Jerry Zucker, the self-made Charleston billionaire and industrialist whose self-effacing manner belied a high intellect and an extraordinary ability to amass a global empire of companies, died on Saturday. He was 58.
The cause was brain cancer. A funeral service was held for Zucker at Synagogue Emanu-El on Sunday afternoon. He was interred at the Emanu-El Cemetery in Maryville.
Zucker, a native of Tel-Aviv, Israel, came to the United States in 1952, and after passing through Ellis Island — “the true immigrant experience,” Zucker told the Charleston Regional Business Journal in 2006 — settled in the Charleston area.
“My father was the only survivor of his immediate family of 11 from the Holocaust,” Zucker remembered. “We settled in Charleston because we’d been sponsored by a relative who lived here.”
Zucker’s father, Leon Zucker, an ordained rabbi who never had a congregation, instilled in his son a penchant for engineering and invention.
In 1982, Jerry Zucker and a fellow executive bought Connecticut-based Raybestos-Manhattan’s North Charleston plant and renamed it RM Industrial Products. That company was later sold, but it set Zucker on a course of always being the captain of his own ship.
Zucker founded The InterTech Group Inc. in 1983, a conglomerate of chemical, textile and manufacturing firms that today is ranked by Forbes as the 38th largest private company in the United States and by South Carolina 100 as the state’s second largest privately held company.
The InterTech Group and its affiliates manufacture a wide variety of polymer and elastomer-based products ranging from microporous membranes and molded goods, to high temperature and cryogenic insulation products.
In addition to its North Charleston headquarters, the company has operations and offices in Latin America, South America, Canada, Europe and the Far East, as well as various other electronics, entertainment, financial, real estate and related holdings throughout North America.
Zucker said in his 2006 interview that he relied on a simple formula when assessing possible corporate acquisitions: He’d look for obvious synergies with existing holdings and try to determine if he could bring added value or enhanced productivity to their base performance.
Through the privately held Mid-Atlantic Investors, Zucker has placed and managed large-scale investments in numerous U.S.-based banking and financial institutions, including the arrangement and merger of several banks and thrifts over the past decade.
The North Charleston-based company, which Zucker served as chairman and CEO until his death, is estimated by Forbes magazine to have annual sales in excess of $3 billion.
“What I love is taking a concept and turning it into realty,” Zucker said.
In 2006, Zucker bought the 336-year-old Hudson’s Bay Co. — Canada’s largest department store chain — for a reported $1.3 billion. King Charles II of England chartered the corporation that would become Hudson’s Bay in 1670, conferring upon a group of London merchants sovereign rights over much of what would eventually become Canada.
Zucker was the first U.S. citizen to control Canada’s oldest company.
In a written statement released over the weekend, Anita Zucker said she succeeded her husband as chairperson of the board and CEO of the InterTech Group, effective immediately. Their son, Jonathan Zucker, was named president.
The Hudson Bay Co.’s board also installed Anita Zucker as the company’s governor while deputy governor and president Robert Johnston was named its new CEO.
“While we grieve this tragic loss, the Zucker family is committed to the continued success and growth of Hudson’s Bay Company and its related entities,” Anita Zucker said in a written statement. “We are confident in our stellar management team, led by Rob Johnston, and our dedicated associates, and I look forward to working closely with them to continue bringing innovation and quality to the Canadian consumer.”
Zucker graduated from the University of Florida with a triple major in math, chemistry and physics. He later earned a master’s degree in electrical engineering from the same institution.
Often described as a scientific genius, Jerry Zucker registered more than 350 invention disclosures and patents during his lifetime, ranging from a method for removing hydrocarbons absorbed in a fabric, to a process for purifying excess ink recovered from printing, to a way to perforate the outside end of a roll of paper towel so manufacturers don’t have to glue it down before packaging it.
Particularly important to him were some of the wide varieties of medical products his affiliates make. “That’s where I’m proudest of what we do,” he said. “That we’ve made a lot of products that are helping people.”
On other business fronts, Zucker was part-owner of the South Carolina Stingrays minor league hockey team, and he and his family own two local restaurants, Tristan’s and the Sunfire Grill and Bistro.
Zucker kept a low profile while amassing businesses. He was equally low key about his many philanthropic endeavors. Throughout his life he gave to many causes both at home and abroad.
Over the years, Zucker served as chairman of the College of Charleston's Jewish Studies Advisory Board, president of the Boy Scouts of America's Coastal Carolina Council, chairman of the South Carolina Aquarium and president of the Charleston Jewish Federation.
“My father would never reveal his age, but when asked about it he would say, ‘No one should be judged by their years, only by their deeds.’
“My father would continue, ‘If someone sadly died at 26, but had done something of value that benefited others,’ in Hebrew that’s called Tikkun Olam, or repair of the world, ‘then he nonetheless lived a full life. On the other hand, if someone lived to 120 but had not contributed to Tikkun Olam, then of what measure were his years?’”
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