Seagram chairman Edgar Bronfman dies

Edgar M Bronfman Sr, the drinks magnate who led the international expansion of Seagram and as the long-serving president of the World Jewish Congress championed a "Jewish renaissance", died on Saturday at his home in New York. He was 84.

Bronfman, born in Montreal, started his career as an apprentice taster at Seagram, the world's largest distiller of alcohol beverages founded in 1924 by his father, Samuel Bronfman, a Russian immigrant who smuggled whiskey across the Canadian-US border during the prohibition era.

Edgar took control of the Seagram empire from his father in 1971, when he was named chairman and chief executive.

"There was never any doubt in my mind as to what my life's work would be," Bronfman wrote in his 1998 autobiography Good Spirits: The Making of a Businessman, one of four autobiographical books.

Under his command, Seagram expanded beyond its line of premium whisky brands, such as Chivas Regal, into wines and a wide range of other businesses. He led the acquisition of Tropicana and a controlling stake in the film studio MGM.

He also pushed the company into the oil and chemical businesses by making it DuPont's largest minority shareholder.

"To turn $100 into $110 is work. To turn $100m into $110m is inevitable," Bronfman is known to have said. Forbes magazine said he had a net worth of $2.6bn in 2011.

In 1994, Bronfman retired as chairman and chief executive of Seagram. His son Edgar Bronfman Jr succeeded him as chief executive. Seagram's beverage division was eventually acquired by Pernod Ricard and Diageo.

The son of eastern European Jewish immigrants, Bronfman was president of the World Jewish Congress from 1981 until 2007, presiding over its transformation into a more focused and confrontational organisation.

During his tenure, the US Congress increased pressure on the then-Soviet Union to loosen emigration restrictions on Jews. Bronfman also pressed congressional efforts to expose the Nazi past of Kurt Waldheim, the former UN secretary-general and later president of Austria.

Bronfman said his work at the foundation was about "finding new ways to teach young Jewish people the stories and ethics our ancestors have handed down, and to nurture in them a pride in our common history".

"What we have to do is write the last chapter," Bronfman told Reuters in a 1996 interview to promote his book, The Making of a Jew.

Bronfman, who was married five times including twice to the same woman, made headlines in 1975 when his son Samuel was kidnapped and Bronfman himself delivered a ransom of more than $2m.

Bronfman died of natural causes, the New York Times reported, citing the family's Samuel Bronfman Foundation.

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