Sam Zell, the iconic real estate magnate from Chicago, passed away due to complications arising from a recent illness.

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Zell died at home due to complications from a recent illness, according to Equity Group Investments, a company he founded in 1968.

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Bearded and blunt-spoken, Zell reveled in bucking traditional wisdom. He had a golden touch with real estate, and got his start managing apartment buildings as a college student. By the time he reached his 70s, he had amassed a fortune estimated at $3.8 billion.

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Zell sold Equity Office, the office-tower company he spent three decades building, to Blackstone Group for $39 billion in 2007. It was the largest private equity transaction in history, and Zell personally netted $1 billion.

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A month later, he made another deal that ultimately tarnished his image: the acquisition of the ailing Tribune Co. for $13 billion. The media giant filed for bankruptcy the following year.

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Real estate was his trademark, but as he noted in an interview shortly before making the ill-fated Tribune deal, it represented only about 25% of his holdings.

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“I’m a professional opportunist,” Zell told The Associated Press at the time. “I’m pretty sure that no matter what topic you pick, we’re involved in some way or another.”

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“I’m a professional opportunist,” Zell told The Associated Press at the time. “I’m pretty sure that no matter what topic you pick, we’re involved in some way or another.”

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His father was a wholesale jeweler who dabbled successfully in real estate investment and the stock market.

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The young Zell took pictures at his 8th-grade prom and sold them, and later took to buying Playboy magazines in downtown Chicago and reselling them to his classmates in Hebrew school in the suburbs for a 200% markup.

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His first successes in real estate came while he was a student at the University of Michigan. After managing the building where he lived in incorporating an apartment-management business and then selling it.

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