Thomas Pritzker, Hyatt chairman: a billionaire with many faces

Tom Pritzker sees himself as an entrepreneur and a good part of his $3.2bn fortune has indeed been the result of his own efforts. So it is frustrating for him when others do not see him quite that way, focusing on the money he inherited instead.

"I hate it when people use the word 'scion' to describe me," he says. "I always ask myself, 'is the money really yours?' I see myself as a founder. I try to do things by merit." Nevertheless, he concedes that "there is a big dichotomy between how I see myself and how others do".

Mr Pritzker and his cousin Penny, secretary of commerce in US President Barack Obama's administration, are the face of the Chicago-based Pritzker family, collectively best known for its control of the Hyatt hotel chain as well as for a well-publicised and bitter dispute among cousins that led to a break-up of the empire.

Mr Pritzker, number 530 on the Forbes list of the world's wealthiest individuals, was the driving force of that break-up, which took more than 10 years and involved 300 companies.

He is in New York for the opening of the Park Hyatt Hotel, which towers over Carnegie Hall on 57th Street in midtown and casts a daunting shadow over Central Park for part of the day. Mr Pritzker sits at a choice table in the wood-panelled Back Room restaurant and greets staff as if Hyatt were still a family business rather than a listed corporation. That said, the 64 year old remains the business's largest shareholder and chairman.

It was his great-grandfather Nicholas who created the platform for the family's business success, fleeing the pogroms and likely compulsory military service of Ukraine for the US at the age of 10. But it was three siblings from a later generation - Donald, Jay and Robert Pritzker - who really struck it rich.

Jay, Tom's father, bought the hotel that became the nucleus of the Hyatt chain in 1957. Today, the company has a market capitalisation of $10bn after a minority stake was listed in 2009.

The hotel chain had been the highest profile part of the family empire that was broken up in the aftermath of Jay's death in 1999.

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"Presiding over the dissolution was painful," he says. "There were many different views about the family situation. In most things, it is possible to make a course correction but this was a decision that was irreversible. If you make an acquisition, for example, and you are wrong, you can mitigate what you've done. You don't agonise. You just calculate whether this math is better than that math."

For a man who takes pride in building businesses, Mr Pritzker has also had to learn to take pride in exiting on the right terms. His first big sale was Conwood, a smokeless tobacco company that fetched $3.5bn to be divided among the squabbling heirs.

One of the companies in the empire that Mr Pritzker was particularly proud of was Marmon, an industrial conglomerate with interests from vehicle parts to railway carriages. He ran the business after his uncle Robert retired and boosted sales, before eventually selling it to Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway.

"I wanted to find the right home for it," he says. "I considered an auction but auctions involve risk. You may get a market clearing price but not a home that reflects us."

But the sale of Marmon was complicated by the fact that it was 2007 and mortgage funds under the umbrella of Wall Street firms were beginning to blow up. "By the time we began talking it was around Christmas of 2007 and I was scared to death," he says. "I was very concerned about the timing."

"I knew Warren Buffett was the right home and it made sense for Berkshire Hathaway," he recalls. "So I had Byron Trott, [a leading Chicago-based banker] call him representing us. From that first call to signing took 13 days."

He pauses. "I also knew I could only be half wrong," he adds. "I only sold him 60 per cent at first." The rest of the stake was sold down over time.

Still, the stress when Mr Pritzker presents himself is usually on what he has built rather than what he has inherited or sold. These businesses range from healthcare companies to a container leasing concern that he started with $1m and now has $5bn in assets.

Hyatt still retains the aura of a private company, which is to say that it has a reputation for being less open than other public companies, including its rival Hilton Worldwide, which secured a stock exchange listing much more recently.

In its defence, Hyatt executives say the company does not believe in certain metrics the industry uses and therefore does not disclose them.

Mr Pritzker says Hyatt is in better shape than it was five years ago when it became a publicly traded company. "We are more focused. And it is my job to make sure we maintain our core values."

"The connection between Hyatt and the Pritzkers is meaningful," says Mark Hoplamazian, Hyatt's chief executive. "It gives Hyatt a face."

Mr Pritzker suggests that the culture at Hyatt is very people-centred. He quotes the late Conrad Hilton, founder of the Hilton chain, who famously said that the most important thing for a hotel was "location, location, location": "For Hyatt it is people, people, people."

However, Hyatt has a long history of disputes with both union and non-union employees. Unite Here, a union that represents hotel workers, was locked in a bitter dispute with the group for four years and only last July reached a settlement that involved an increase in wages and the promise to preserve pension and healthcare benefits until 2018.

Workers also air their grievances on a website, Hyatt Hurts, on such matters as how many rooms they have to clean.

Mr Pritzker says he is not averse to unions (one of his three sons is a member of a carpenters union) and is concerned about matters such as income inequality. However, he believes the key to lessening the gap between rich and poor is education.

"Unfortunately, regulation or redistribution through the tax system is not sustainable," he says. "You have to have inequality within an acceptable range. You need education and you need growth to create opportunity."

Mr Pritzker, who is on the board of the University of Chicago, has sponsored research and data mining in search of practical information on how to improve urban education in the US.

The billionaire's philanthropic activities have also included financing research into mental health issues after one of his sisters killed herself. He channelled money to both universities and drug companies in an effort to combine private-sector discipline with non-profit goals in this area.

A longstanding interest in the mountainous border region that China and Tibet share with India and Nepal has also led to him being named an honorary professor at Sichuan University. He has hiked extensively in the region and spent his honeymoon there.

He has been going to China for almost 40 years and lobbied for a recent Pritzker Architecture Prize - set up by his father Jay - to be awarded in Beijing at the Great Hall of the People. An art collector, he also chairs the board of trustees at the prestigious Art Institute of Chicago.

Mr Pritzker acknowledges that he has a large number of different identities, including the entrepreneurial one he is so keen that people recognise. "I think like a founder. I only ever wanted to play with the capital that I earned. But I also live a lot of different lives," he says, with a smile. "We have changed the hand we have been dealt."

Further reading: Second opinion: Hank Paulson

"How can you be in Chicago and not know Tom Pritzker?" asks former US Treasury secretary Hank Paulson, who was based in Chicago for Goldman Sachs from the mid-70s to the mid-90s. "Every discussion is fun because he always adds another dimension, he has such an inquisitive mind."

The two men share a keen interest in China. "He understands that country like few people," Mr Paulson adds. "The strongest links with China are built by business people like Tom."

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