Robert Kenneth Kraft was born on the 5th June 1941 in Brookline, Massachusetts USA. Kraft is best known to the world as a businessman, the CEO of the Kraft Group, a group of privately held companies in the professional sports, manufacturing, and real estate development industries doing business in 90 countries. Robert has been an active member of the entertainment industry since 1965.
Have you ever wondered how rich Robert Kraft is? According to sources, it is estimated that Kraft`s overall net worth is $5.5 billion, an amount he owes mostly to his successful career as a businessman.
Robert Kraft Net Worth $5.5 Billion
Robert grew up in Brookline, raised by a Jewish family, so it was expected for Robert to practice the Jewish religion. His father wanted him to become a rabii, but Robert had different plans. He was a student of Brookline High School, after which in 1959 he enrolled at Columbia University on a scholarship, and soon became a class president. He graduated from Columbia in 1963, and soon became a student of the Harvard Business School, receiving his MBA degree in 1965.
His professional career began soon after graduation from Harvard Business School, as he found a job at the Rand-Whitney Group, a packaging company situated in Worchester. In 1968, Robert took over the company in a leveraged buyout, and soon established International Forest Products, a trader of physical paper commodities. Robert merged his two companies, and made it the largest privately held paper and packaging company in the United States. Over the years, Forest Products became a top 100 US exportimport company, collaborating with numerous companies such as Kodak, Avon and others, increasing Robert’s net worth to a large degree.
Robert`s interests expanded over the years, and he needed a larger company, which will satisfy his needs, and eventually he formed Kraft Group in 1988. Since then, his net worth has been in a constant rise; some of the possessions of the Kraft Group include sports teams such as the NFL team New England Patriots, which Robert bought in 1994, as he is an avid fan of the team, the MLS team New England Revolution, which Robert acquired in 1995. Furthermore, Kraft funded the construction of the Patriots` Gillette Stadium and the “Patriots Place”, an entertainment and lifestyle center in the surrounds of the Gillette Stadium.
Robert is also known for his philanthropic endeavors; over the years he has donated over $100 million to numerous humanitarian organizations, which deal with education, poor and ill children, and other causes. Kraft also donated $20 million to Partners Health Care to launch the Kraft Family National Center for Leadership and Training in Community Health.
Thanks to his successful career, Robert has been awarded numerous prestigious accolades, including the Theodore Roosevelt Award in 2006, George Galas Award which he got in 2012, and in 2011 Kraft was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Regarding his personal life, Robert was married to Myra Nathalie Hiatt from 1963 until 2011, when she died from cancer. The couple had four sons, and three of them are already in the family business. Jonathan A. Kraft is the current president of the Kraft Group and owner of the New England Patriots; Daniel A. Kraft, who is president of the International Forest Products; Joshua Kraft is president and CEO of the Boys And Girls Clubs of Boston; and David Kraft.
Leave a Comment