Andrew H. Tisch
Family Matters
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| Giving back: Thinking of new ways to solve society's problems is an important part of this executive’s agenda. Photo by Steve Boljonis |
Growing up in the Fifties and Sixties, Andrew Tisch never had to seek out part-time jobs. Employment opportunities were everywhere in the family business, a chain of hotels in New Jersey, Florida, and New York City. “I started before I was a teenager,” Tisch recalls with a smile, “doing little things like helping the pool attendant put towels on the chaise longues. It was a family business, so we were all involved.”
Tisch Hotels evolved into the Loews Corporation, one of the largest diversified financial enterprises in the United States. Last year, the firm had revenues of $19 billion from its five subsidiaries — the Bulova Watch Company, insurer CNA Financial, Diamond Offshore Drilling, Loews Hotels, and the Lorillard Tobacco Company — and from other investments. Since 1997, when the founders passed the baton to the next generation, Tisch has been part of a triumvirate, including a brother and cousin, that forms the Office of the President at Loews' Manhattan headquarters. Among his primary responsibilities are watching over several major real estate investments and working closely with the CEOs of several subsidiaries.
Tisch's management skills were put to the test not long after he graduated from HBS, when Loews bought Bulova in 1979. “Although Bulova had a strong brand name,” he explains, “we soon realized it was losing out to its Japanese competitors in technology, styling, quality, marketing, and service.” With debt totaling $50 million and banks circling outside the door, the company was heading for bankruptcy.
Instead of a three-month stint, Tisch stayed on for the next decade as Bulova's president. His strategy: buy components (and eventually whole watches) from suppliers, rather than manufacture everything in the firm's high-cost factories. In addition, the company focused on improving its sales force and restoring retailers' confidence in the quality of an expanded and more fashionable product line.
After five years, Bulova was breaking even; when Tisch left to become chairman and CEO of Lorillard in 1989, it was making money again. “The key to successful turnaround management is to try to make the least bad decision based on imperfect and incomplete information,” Tisch says. “The case method helped prepare me to do that.”
Tisch's leadership qualities were very much in evidence during his undergraduate days at Cornell, where he was vice chairman of the hotel school's student body and organized protests against U.S. involvement in Vietnam. He credits his parents with his abiding interest in leadership and social issues. “They provided us with a moral compass and emphasized the importance of playing a part in the community,” he observes.
Tisch has long been committed to numerous philanthropic and social causes, including the Young Women's Leadership School of East Harlem, a public high school established by his wife, Ann, in 1996 to provide a single-sex educational option to inner-city girls in New York. He was recently elected president of the Jewish Communal Fund and currently heads the New York City Parks Foundation.
The father of four, Tisch strives to strike some balance in his very full life. As it is, however, he normally sleeps only four-and-a-half hours a night. “Not to worry,” he laughs. “A fifteen-minute nap in the afternoon works wonders.”
— James E. Aisner (send e-mail to the author)
PROFILES FROM THE CLASS OF 1977
John R. Davis: Nature's Blessing
Michael F. Cronin: A Focus on the Fundamentals
Ann M. Fudge: Enhanced Perspective
Steven C. Watson: Course Change
Karen Gordon Mills: Her Excellent Adventures
Amy S. Langer: Fighting the Good Fight
Jeremiah P. Murphy, Jr.: Improving the Coop's Numbers
Andrew H. Tisch: Family Matters
