LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Marc Rich: Philipp Brothers
built 179 days ago
Mr. Rich's first big deal was in mercury. Quicksilver had been in high demand during the 1950-53 Korean War, sending governments around the world scrambling to purchase and warehouse the material for use in future military conflicts. Mr. Rich managed to acquire the rights to most of the production of the world's two biggest producers, allowing Philipp Brothers to buy low and sell high. Impressed, Mr. Jesselson put Mr. Rich on the fast track and began referring to him as his son.
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Rich is legendary for cultivating people in high places. Traders say he could reach practically any diplomat, oil minister, or dictator in an instant with a phone that some joked seemed surgically attached to his ear. Two of his key Mideast connections were the powerful Bakhtiar brothers, Esfandiar and Bahman. The Bakhtiars -- whose father, investigators believe, headed the Shah of Iran's secret police -- fled to Iraq after the Shah's ouster. Thanks to family ties, Saddam treated them like "adopted sons," says Jules B. Kroll, founder of Kroll Inc., hired by Kuwait to investigate Saddam's finances in 1991.
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The strategy made big profits for Philipp Bros., but Rich quit. Apparently infuriated by his pay and by trading strictures, he was determined "to grind Philipp Bros. into oblivion," according to Copetas.
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In 1967, Phillip Brothers transferred Mr. Rich to Madrid along with a fellow trader, Pincus "Pinky" Green, an orthodox Jew whose dirty shirts and sneakers contrasted with Mr. Rich's elegant suits and trademark flashy neckties. Together, they developed a system that allowed Philipp Brothers to bypass the major oil companies, the "Seven Sisters" who then controlled the world's oil supplies. They had invented spot oil trading.
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