“I think that what I did in those years was a greater achievement than
what I’ve done since,” he was quoted as saying in a 1996 biography of
his family, “The Reichmanns,” by Anthony Bianco. Paul Reichmann was born
in Vienna on Sept. 27, 1930, the fifth of six siblings. His parents,
Samuel and Rene, were Orthodox Jews who had moved from rural Hungary to
Vienna, where they owned a prosperous egg export business. But Nazi
Germany’s annexation of Austria in 1938 forced the family to flee to
Paris.
Two years later, when the Nazis overran France, the Reichmanns fled to
Tangier, Morocco, where Samuel Reichmann became a successful currency
trader.
The Reichmanns filed for bankruptcy protection in London, Toronto and New York simultaneously.
Only three years later, Mr. Reichmann regained the helm at Canary Wharf,
which finally gained nearly full occupancy in 2000 thanks to a booming
real estate market in London. By 2000, the Reichmann family’s net worth
reached $1 billion. But in an interview with Institutional Investor that
year, Mr. Reichmann said his business accomplishments had never given
him the sense of fulfillment he experienced as a youthful religious
social worker and teacher in North Africa. But “what could have been is a
silly way to look at things,” he said. “You are what you are.”
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