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OAN Staff James Meyers
8:29 AM – Tuesday, November 5, 2024
The co-founder of Home Depot, Bernie Marcus, has died at the age of 95.
Marcus, the son of Russian-Jewish immigrants who rose from a tenement in Newark, N.J., to create one of the world’s biggest and most recognizable brands, the Home Depot Corporation, died late Monday at his home in Boca Raton, Florida.
Marcus is best known as one of the founders of Home Depot, teaming up with financier Ken Langone and Atlanta Falcons owner Arthur Blank to create from scratch a company that employs almost 500,000 people working in thousands of stores across the U.S.
“The entire Home Depot family is deeply saddened by the death of our co-founder Bernie Marcus,” a Home Depot spokesperson told the New York Post. “He was a master merchant and a retail visionary. But even more importantly, he valued our associates, customers and communities above all.”
As his rise to fortune continued, he was estimated to be worth close to $6 billion.
Currently, Home Depot has 2,300 locations and its stock-market value tops $400 billion.
In one of his last interviews in November 2023, Marcus spoke with Fox Business senior correspondent Charlie Gasparino in a wide-ranging interview in which he criticized President Joe Biden’s economic policies for the staggering inflation that has caused the rise in prices for consumers.
“I never anticipated anything like what we’re going through,” Marcus said of Biden at the time. “I wake up every morning and I say, ‘What is this dunce going to do today?’”
“He cut back drilling, he caused the inflation, the inflation caused every other problem for every businessman, for every American,” Marcus said. “And the people that he’s supposed to represent – the poor people, the middle class – they’re getting killed today.”
Marcus is also known for founding the Job Creators Network, which is a small business advocacy group, more than a decade ago.
“Bernie Marcus was one of the great American business success stories,” said Alfredo Ortiz, CEO of the Job Creators Network. “But Bernie was so much more than a businessman. He was a visionary, a philanthropist, and a dedicated family man. While The Home Depot grew to become one of the nation’s largest businesses, Bernie never forgot the importance of small businesses to the economy and the country as a whole. He generously tasked JCN with preserving the small business economy against relentless big government attacks.”
Marcus and his wife Billi, who founded the Marcus Foundation, have given over $2 billion to multiple causes.
“Bernie Marcus’s legendary business success is matched only by his generous philanthropy,” said Elaine Parker, president of Job Creators Network Foundation. “He didn’t just give back but paid it forward, helping preserve the free-market economy that enables the next generation of Home Depots.”
“Bernie recognized that small businesses and entrepreneurship are the lifeblood of the American economy,” she added. “And the best way to protect them is by defending capitalism, the only economic system that allows ordinary people to become entrepreneurs and financially independent.”
The couple is also part of “the Giving Pledge” along with Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, Elon Musk and other wealthy individuals. The organization supports philanthropists who commit to giving a majority of their wealth to charity.
Home Depot went public in 1981 for $12 per share and is trading around $395 a share as of Tuesday.
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