David H. Koch
David H. Koch was an influential American businessman and philanthropist, born on March 5, 1940, in Wichita, Kansas, to a family involved in engineering and conservative politics. He graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) with degrees in chemical engineering and later became executive vice president of Koch Industries, a company founded by his father that grew into one of the largest privately owned corporations in the U.S. Throughout his career, Koch was known for his support of conservative causes, notably serving as the Libertarian Party's vice presidential candidate in 1980 and being a significant donor to organizations advocating for free-market policies.
Koch was also a prominent philanthropist, donating substantial sums to cancer research following his own battle with prostate cancer. His contributions included major gifts to institutions like Johns Hopkins University, MIT, and the American Museum of Natural History. Despite his philanthropic efforts, Koch faced criticism from climate change activists due to his financial ties to organizations that disputed climate science. He retired from Koch Industries in June 2018, leaving behind a legacy marked by both his business acumen and his impactful, albeit contentious, involvement in American politics and philanthropy.
David H. Koch
American industrialist
- Born: March 5, 1940
- Birthplace: Wichita, Kansas
- Died: August 23, 2019
- Place of death: Kansas
Brothers Charles G. and David H. Koch built a family business, Koch Industries, Inc., into the second-largest privately owned firm in the United States. David Koch was a leader in the Libertarian Party, who used his vast fortune to fund conservative causes and many medical, educational, and arts institutions.
Sources of wealth: Inheritance; oil; real estate
Bequeathal of wealth: Spouse; children; charity
Early Life
David Hamilton Koch and his twin brother, William, were born in Wichita, Kansas, on March 5, 1940, to Frederick “Fred” Chase Koch and Mary Robinson Koch. Fred, the son of a Dutch immigrant, grew up in Texas and graduated with a degree in chemical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1922. In 1925, he moved to Wichita and made the city his home. By the late 1920’s, Fred had cofounded an engineering company that developed an improved method for converting crude oil into gasoline. Fred took this new technology to the Soviet Union, returning to the United States as a fervent anti-Communist who would become a charter member of the John Birch Society.
In 1932, Fred married Mary Robinson. The daughter of a Kansas City surgeon, Robinson had also been educated in the Boston area, at Wellesley College, and at the Kansas City Art Institute. She was an accomplished silversmith and had a lifelong interest in drawing and painting. Just as Fred would pass his abilities in engineering and business and his commitment to conservative politics to three of his four sons, Mary instilled a love of the arts in all four boys.
David, his twin brother Bill, and older brothers Fred and Charles G. grew up in Wichita in a large, elegant home across the street from the Wichita Country Club, but they spent much of their summers on family ranches in Montana and Kansas, where their father insisted they learn the value of hard work. David attended preparatory school at Deerfield Academy in western Massachusetts and then followed his father and older brother to MIT, from which he earned bachelor’s (1962) and master’s (1963) degrees in chemical engineering. While an undergraduate at MIT, the tall Kansan was a basketball star and captain of his team, scoring a three-year average of twenty-one points per game.
First Ventures
In the mid-1960’s, Rock Island Oil and Refining Company, which David’s father ran, was rapidly expanding its holdings in ranch land in Montana and Texas and its co-ownership of refineries, and the firm was introducing new industrial products in its manufacturing units. Charles joined the company in 1961. The twins, David and Bill, five years younger than Charles, soon followed suit and took executive positions in the family company. In 1967, Fred C. Koch named his second son, Charles, the chief executive officer, bypassing the eldest son, Fred, who had majored in liberal arts in college, had no interest in engineering projects, and had become estranged from his father. Fred C. Koch died the next year and soon after his death the company’s name was changed to Koch Industries, Inc. David would become executive vice president of the company. In the 1970’s, Koch Industries diversified into petrochemicals, real estate, oil trading services, oil exploration, and drilling. By 1974, company sales exceeded $2 billion.
David’s brother Charles cofounded the Cato Institute in 1977, and since that time David has been a generous donor to the conservative think tank, serving on its board of directors. In the 1980 presidential election, David Koch was the Libertarian Party candidate for vice president. Koch and his running mate, California lawyer Ed Clark, received slightly less than one million votes in the popular election, making the Clark-Koch ticket the most successful Libertarian candidacy in American history until 2012. Koch broke with the Libertarian Party in the mid-1980’s, but he continued to be associated with and financially supportive of conservative advocacy groups, including Americans for Prosperity, the Reason Foundation, and the John M. Olin Foundation. In 1986, he helped found Citizens for a Sound Economy. Koch reportedly donated $1 million personally toward the 2012 Republican National Convention and attended as a delegate.
Mature Wealth
By 1979, David’s twin brother, Bill, had become increasingly displeased with his role in the family business, which continued to expand and diversify. Bill wanted freer access to company information and some means by which a fair market price could be assigned to Koch Industries’ stock. Joined by the eldest brother, Fred, who had been relatively removed from company affairs, Bill launched a proxy fight intended to remove Charles from his position of leadership. David sided with Charles in what became a family feud that would be litigated for decades and would cause a decades-long rift among the brothers. In 1983, Charles and David Koch, the majority owners of Koch Industries, and other company officials bought Bill and Fred’s shares in the company for approximately $1.1 billion in cash. Later, Bill would return to court, claiming that he and his brother had not received a fair price for their interests.
By 1996, Koch Industries had revenues approaching $30 billion. The firm had become an international company, adding offices in London and Singapore to the corporate headquarters that remained in Wichita. (By 2016, the company employed 100,000 people in sixty countries.) In 2004–5, the firm made international business news with two huge acquisitions: the INVISTA textile unit from E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company for $4.2 billion and Georgia-Pacific Corporation for $13.2 billion in cash, plus the assumption of $7.8 billion in debt. With these massive additions, Koch Industries’ revenues reached $98 billion in 2007, making the firm the second-largest privately owned company in the United States. In 2016, Forbes magazine estimated David Koch’s personal wealth at $39.6 billion, making him tied with his brother Charles for the ninth-wealthiest billionaire in the world.
David Koch was a benefactor of cancer prevention causes after his successful bout with prostate cancer in 1995. In 2006, he endowed the David H. Koch Cancer Research Building at Johns Hopkins University with a donation of $20 million, and he served on the board of directors of the Prostate Cancer Foundation; in 2015, Koch pledged to fund the construction and operation of a $150 million outpatient cancer care center at Memorial Sloan Kettering Hospital in New York City. A $100 million gift to his alma mater, MIT, was used to construct the David H. Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research. MIT also received $20 million for a staff daycare center. Another alma mater, Deerfield Academy, received a $68 million gift to finance the construction of the Koch Center for mathematics, science, and technology. The philanthropist was a major contributor to the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) science program Nova and donated $20 million to the American Museum of Natural History in 2006 to finance construction of the David H. Koch Dinosaur Wing. His gift of $100 million to the New York State Theater at Lincoln Center was the largest single donation in the performance site’s history. The David Koch Hall of Human Origins at the Smithsonian Institution opened on March 17, 2010.
Koch also served as a board member of the American Ballet Theater, WGBH public broadcasting station, American Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, MIT, Sloan Kettering, New York Presbyterian Hospital, and Rockefeller University. Climate change activists protested his involvement with PBS and the natural history museums, in particular, because he funded organizations that actively deny the existence of climate change or try to obscure its cause; however, there was little evidence that he shaped the content of those institutions' programming.
Koch retired from his position at Koch Industries in June 2018.
Legacy
Koch Industries, Inc., for which David Koch served as executive vice president until his retirement, grew from a small engineering and oil company cofounded by his father in the 1920’s into a multibillion-dollar international enterprise with dozens of subsidiaries and tens of thousands of employees in scores of countries. Koch championed conservative causes for decades and was a vice presidential candidate on the Libertarian Party ticket in 1980. The billionaire influenced the political agenda of the Republican Party. His gifts to medical, educational, and arts institutions broke previous records and often shaped the futures of recipient institutions.
Personal Life
In May 1996, longtime bachelor David Koch married Julia Flesher, originally from Conway, Arkansas, at his home in Southampton, Long Island, New York. The ceremony was performed by the dean of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. The bride, a former model, who, as an assistant to fashion designer Adolfo had dressed First Lady Nancy Reagan in the designer’s clothes, was known as a fashion leader. Julia Koch joined her husband in frequent and successful fund-raisers for cultural events and charitable causes. David and Julia Koch have two sons and a daughter and maintain additional homes in Palm Beach, Florida, and Southampton, Long Island. On August 23, 2019, Koch died in his home at the age of seventy-nine.
Bibliography
Berman, Dennis K., and Chad Terhune. “Koch Industries to Buy Georgia-Pacific.” The Wall Street Journal, November 14, 2005, p. A3.
Fisher, Daniel. "Inside the Koch Empire: How the Brothers Plan to Reshape America." Forbes.com. Forbes, 5 Dec. 2012. Web. 24 June 2016.
Kelley, John L. Bringing the Market Back In: The Political Revitalization of Market Liberalism. New York: New York University Press, 1997.
Koch, Charles G. The Science of Success: How Market-Based Management Built the World’s Largest Private Company. Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley & Sons, 2007.
Landsbaum, Claire. "Climate Denier David H. Koch Leaves American Museum of Natural History’s Board." New York. New York Media, 21 Jan. 2016. Web. 24 June 2016.
Mayer, Jane. “Covert Operations.” The New Yorker 86, no. 25 (August 30, 2010): 44-65.
McFadden, Robert D. "David Koch, Billionaire Who Fueled Right-Wing Movement, Dies at 79." The New York Times, 23 Aug. 2019,www.nytimes.com/2019/08/23/us/david-koch-dead.html. Accessed 10 Sept. 2019.
O’Reilly, Brian. “The Curse of the Koch Brothers: One of the Biggest Family Feuds in Business History May Soon Come to a Climax.” Fortune, February 17, 1997.