Meshulam Riklis*

The son of Russian Jews, Meshulam Riklis was born in Istanbul, Turkey, in 1923 and was educated in Israel. During World War II, he was the chauffeur for a Jewish chaplain with the British Eighth Army. His service financed the cost of immigrating to America in 1947. Riklis enrolled at Ohio State University, majoring in mathematics. He worked full time as a teacher of Hebrew and Jewish history to pay his college costs and support his first wife and two young children.

Upon graduation, Riklis took a job as an analyst for a Minneapolis brokerage firm, still teaching Hebrew school at night. By 1954, at age 29, Riklis had put together a syndicate of investors and purchased his first company, a small typesetting firm, for $25,000. Soon, he was the talk of Wall Street. He used borrowed money to buy undervalued companies; then he used those assets to provide the leverage for larger takeovers. "I was the first to do a leveraged buyout," he said.

Once his financial empire was established, he returned to Ohio State to earn a master's degree in finance in 1966.

By 1969, the year he received the Horatio Alger Award, Riklis was 45 and the chairman of three entities, Rapid-American Corp., Glen Alden Corp. and McCrory & Company, with combined sales of more than $2 billion. In the early 1980s, he became chairman and CEO of the Riklis Family Corp., the successor to Rapid-American, a cosmetics company he took private in 1981.

Riklis admitted that his business ventures were not always successful, but with hard work and perseverance, he always turned things around to his advantage. "When you're down in business, it's not the end," he said. "It's never a lost cause. Twice I've been down, and then I fought back to higher ground than before."

In talking about his business skills, he said, "You have to have a lot of guts, but that's what America is all about, individual enterprise. Here, there are many stops on the ladder. You can stop somewhere along the way or you can go all the way to the top. The more you are leveraged, the higher you can go; on the other hand, you can lose your footing more readily."

Riklis has always enjoyed speaking to young people and taught college business courses at Ohio State. "To be successful, you have to believe in what you want to achieve and work hard to obtain it," he said. "You also have to understand you can't enjoy success without sharing your good fortune with others."

Asked about his Horatio Alger Award, Riklis said, "Perseverance and hard work have brought me success. That's what my Horatio Alger Award represents, and I have always been very proud of it."