John Tyson
$1.91 B
John Tyson is the chairman of Tyson Foods, the food processor that breeds, slaughters, ships and sells the animals that end up in grocery stores across America. The company was originally founded by Tyson’s grandfather in 1935, and John took over as CEO in 2000. One year later, he led a $4.6 billion leveraged takeover of Tyson’s larger competitor IBP. The gamble paid off, and by the time he stepped back as chairman in 2006, Tyson was leading a much larger company than the one he had inherited. The business has continued to gobble up competitors since, paying $7.7 billion for Hillshire Brands in 2014 after a bidding war with rival Pilgrim’s Pride. The deal proved to be a massive success, thanks to booming chicken sales. John Tyson is a heavy hitter in Arkansas’ elite circles, serving on the board of Wal-Mart heiress Alice Walton’s Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art and donating Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign alongside fellow billionaires like Walton, George Soros and Marc Benioff.
You’d be hard-pressed to find anyone in the US or other industrialized countries who doesn’t regularly consume meat products sold by Tyson Foods Inc.(aside from vegetarians and vegans, of course). Over the course of about 80 years, the company has become the second largest meat producer in the world. The company’s Chairman and former CEO, John H. Tyson, has a net worth of around $1.8 billion.
But if you ask him, he’ll tell you he’s “just a chicken farmer”.
Tyson is the grandson of the founder of Tyson Foods, John W. Tyson. At age 62, he’s been working in the family business for practically his entire life, starting as a teenager and eventually joining the Board of Directors in 1984. He quickly worked his way up, and was CEO of the business from 1999-2006. He currently serves as Chairman.
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