Charles Koch Biography

Charles de Ganahl Koch  was born  in November 1, 1935 is an American businessman and philanthropist. He is co-owner, chairman of the board, and chief executive officer of Koch Industries, while his brother David H. Koch serves as Executive Vice President. Charles and David each own 42% of the conglomerate. The brothers inherited the business from their father, Fred C. Koch, then expanded the business.Originally involved exclusively in oil refining and chemicals, Koch Industries now includes process and pollution control equipment and technologies; polymers and fibers; minerals; fertilizers; commodity trading and services; forest and consumer products; and ranching. The businesses produce a wide variety of well-known brands, such as Stainmaster carpet, the Lycra brand of spandex fiber, Quilted Northern tissue and Dixie Cup. He is opposed tocorporate welfare and told the National Journal that his "overall concept is to minimize the role of government and to maximize the role of private economy and to maximize personal freedoms."He said he worries about too much governmental regulation and wrote that, "We could be facing the greatest loss of liberty and prosperity since the 1930s.Mr. Koch received a bachelor’s degree in general engineering (1957) and two master’s degrees in nuclear and chemical engineering (1958 and 1959, respectively) from the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology.His employment has been as an engineer, Arthur D. Little, Inc. 1959-61; vice president, Koch Engineering Company, Inc. 1961-63, president, 1963-71; president, Koch Industries, Inc. 1966-74; chairman and chief executive officer, 1967- present.He was born in Wichita, Kansas. Mr. Koch and his wife of 41 years, Liz, have two children."In a game of squash years ago, Charles injured Weigand with a hard-hit ricochet shot to the head. “Charles wanted to take me to the hospital,” Weigand said. Weigand said it was his own fault for not playing alertly.In the late 1970s, schoolteacher and later Eagle columnist Bonnie Bing played a game of doubles tennis with Liz, Charles and another friend. Charles Koch rushed the net and smashed an overhead shot, accidentally hitting Bing in the mouth. Her lip swelled so big, Bing said, that she could see it growing under her nose.“What the f--- are you doing?” Liz screamed. “This is NOT f------ WIMBLEDON!”Thirty years later, he still apologizes. But as he does with everything, he hit that shot to win.Losing candidates say he plays politics like that.Dan Glickman was a Democratic member of Congress from Wichita until 1994, when he says the Kochs opposed him for supporting a BTU tax on energy. He lost to Todd Tiahrt.“I was on the receiving end of their campaign decisions,” Glickman said. In 1996, when an ex-governor’s daughter-in-law named Jill Docking ran against Sam Brownback for the U.S. Senate, money got dumped into ads supporting Brownback.Docking had known and liked Charles and Liz Koch most of her life; She had played tennis with Liz. But she and her family will never forget what happened in that campaign. 

An outside group, Triad Management Services, tried to influence the elections without disclosing its donors. She lost.Her husband, Tom, remembers counting six or seven television ads in one evening attacking her, one of them with “dark, shadowy images, and dark voices” saying that Jill “is not who she says she is.” Her full name appeared on the TV screen, including her Jewish maiden name: Jill Sadowsky Docking from Springfield, Mass.“The implication was that she was an East Coast Jew,” Tom Docking said.People told him robo callers were telling voters that Jill and Tom Docking were raising their children not as Christians but as “heathens.”“You kind of laugh at the time,” he said “But the ads were very effective.

”Mark Holden, Koch Industries’ senior vice president and general counsel, said the company donated $1,000 for one to two years to Triad to help elect candidates who supported free-market ideas.“We were understanding that it would be used for legitimate purposes, proper purposes under the law,” he said.But Democrats on the Senate Governmental Affairs committee found “circumstantial evidence” that a trust fund supported by the Kochs gave $1 million to Triad to run attack ads to influence the outcome of 29 congressional races, four of them in Kansas.“While the Senate Democrats and others claimed in 1998 that there was ‘circumstantial evidence’ supporting their allegations, I’ve never seen any such evidence,” Holden said.Triad spent $420,000 to elect Brownback and $131,000 to re-elect Todd Tiahrt. At the time, federal election law banned direct corporate contributions to candidates and held that voters had a right to know who was funding campaigns.Sixteen years later, Docking says, she admires the Kochs, and says Kansans owe Charles and Liz a debt of gratitude for the millions they’ve given to charity. But that political campaign is hard to forget.“It was hard for me personally, because I am a terrible politician in that way,” Jill Docking said. “It was such a huge force against me that I couldn’t help but take it personally….the same way that they take it personally, right? It’s painful, and we all live in a small town.”President’s Medal, Wichita State University (2004) taken the Charles.

World Richest Person:

Born Charles de Ganahl Koch has an estimated net worth of $40.7 billion acoording to Forbes as of March 2014. Co-owner and CEO of the biggest private firm “Koch Industries Inc” in the US; Charles Koch is an eminent business magnate, who made his fortune by transforming his father’s moderately successful oil company into a diversified petroleum products trading company with presence in nearly 60 countries. Known as a person with extraordinary management skills, Charles managed and expanded the inherited business to almost 2,600 times the inherited size. The Koch Industries CEO is the 18th richest man in the world and a munificent philanthropist. Born in Kansas, the son of Late Fred Koch graduated from the prestigious “Massachusetts Institute of Technology” and started helping his father in his oil company named “Rock Island Oil and Refining Company”. After taking over the business reign in 1967, Charles transformed his father’s oil refining firm to a diversified petroleum products company “Koch Industries Inc”, with estimated annual revenue of $40 billion. The company’s expansion included opening facilities in the United States, Mexico, Brazil, and China, acquiring 37,000 miles of oil and gas pipeline and diversifying in areas of pollution control equipment and technologies, forest and consumer products, minerals and fertilizers. Profits from “Koch Industries Inc” provided a flurry of wealth for Charles making him one of the most powerful billionaires in the US.  The eminent business tycoon has a net worth of $25 billion and is one of richest man in the planet. The billionaire’s plush home in Palm Desert, California is his additional pricey asset apart from his highly successful firm. Charles has also held several director positions in other companies like Intrust Financial Corp, Georgia Pasfic Corp and Invista. Charles received many prestigious awards from different Universities and organizations during his lifetime and was also rated one of the most influential people of 2011. The Koch Industries CEO has also made financial support for a number of charitable organizations like “Institute for Humane Studies”, “American Civil Liberties Union”, “Bill of Rights Institute”, “Cato Institute” and “Mercatus Center”. The 76 year old business man is married and has two children.