Thread by @DavidCranmerUn1

PG Special Report: With shadowy money, Ukraine oligarch became Cleveland’s biggest landlord | Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

For Ukraine oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky, the Westin hotel in Cleveland that he owns with partners became the center of the most powerful post-gazette.com/news/crime-cou…

Republican gathering in the nation during the 2016 convention.

Then-candidate Donald Trump set up his headquarters in the downtown luxury hotel. His family members and top advisers stayed in the penthouse presidential suite.

On January 5, 1981, the company changed its name

again to Westin Hotels (a contraction of the words Western International).

Western Hotels expanded to Hawaii in 1956, assuming management of the Hawaiian Village Hotel, built by Henry J. Kaiser.

In 1994, Aoki agreed to sell Westin to real estate investment firm Starwood Capital Group (parent of Starwood) and Goldman Sachs.

In 2016, Marriott International acquired Starwood, becoming the world's largest hotel company.

Marriott maintained extensive business connections

within his LDS Church heritage and membership. A prominent associate was Michigan Governor George W. Romney.

In January 1954, Nash-Kelvinator Corporation began acquisition of the Hudson Motor Car Company (in what was called a merger). The new corporation would be called the

American Motors Corporation.

The new company retained Hudson CEO A.E. Barit as a consultant and he took a seat on the board of directors. Nash's George W. Mason became president and CEO.

Fisher brothers Fred and Charles retired from GM in 1944 they revived the Hudson takeover

idea with the view of establishing new, independent automobile manufacturing operations. The brothers contacted Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands, Hudson's main stockholder, offering to buy.

One of the chief "car men" and organizer of Hudson was Roy D. Chapin Sr., a young

executive who had worked with Ransom E. Olds. (Chapin's son, Roy Jr., would later be president of Hudson-Nash descendant American Motors Corp. in the 1960s).

Roy Dikeman Chapin, Sr. (February 23, 1880 – February 16, 1936) was an American industrialist and a co-founder of Hudson

Motor Company, the predecessor of American Motors Corporation. He also served as the United States Secretary of Commerce from August 8, 1932, to March 3, 1933, during the final months of the administration of President Herbert Hoover.

In addition to his corporate interests,

Chapin spearheaded the drive to build the Lincoln Highway, along with Henry B. Joy of Packard Motors.

Chapin left Hudson for the Hoover administration upon his appointment in 1932.
During his tenure as Secretary of Commerce, Chapin was unsuccessful in persuading Henry Ford to

provide financial help to avoid the collapse of the Union Guardian Trust Company of Detroit. Ford's refusal to aid the bank in averting a financial failure led to the Michigan Bank Holiday, an event that began a series of state bank holidays and ultimately to the passage of

Roosevelt administration's Emergency Banking Act of 1933.
Edsel Ford became secretary of Ford in 1915, and married Eleanor Lowthian Clay (1896–1976), the niece of department store owner J. L. Hudson, on November 1, 1916.

Joseph Lowthian Hudson (October 17, 1846 – July 5, 1912),

a.k.a. J. L. Hudson, was the merchant who founded the Hudson's department store in Detroit, Michigan. Hudson also supplied the seed capital for the establishment, in 1909, of Roy D. Chapin's automotive venture, which Chapin named the Hudson Motor Car Company in honor of J.L.

Hudson.

Sometime in 1930 a drain approaching the proportions of a run began on the large banks in Detroit. In a period of about two and one-half years prior to February 11, 1933, about $250,000,000 was withdrawn from the First National Bank of Detroit, and large sums were also

withdrawn from the Union Guardian Trust Company and the Guardian National Bank of Commerce. In order to meet these withdrawals, the First National Bank was compelled to liquidate practically all of its liquid and unpledged assets, and the Union Guardian Trust Company was

compelled to borrow from the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) and from the Ford interests. Mr. Edsel Ford was Chairman of the Board of the Union Guardian Group.

The Guardian Trust Company attempted to borrow further funds from the RFC. In order to accomplish this,

Henry Ford was asked to subordinate some of the amount owed to the Ford interests to a new loan. He refused to do this, and it seemed obvious that, if the Guardian Trust Company could not meet withdrawals, a chain reaction would occur in the group and spread. It was thought wise

to send someone high in the administration to Detroit to confer with Ford. Those chosen were Arthur A. Ballantine, Under Secretary of the Treasury, and Roy D. Chapin, Secretary of Commerce. A meeting was arranged with Ford by President Herbert Hoover.

The first "Metalclad"

airship, the ZMC-2, was constructed for the U.S. Navy in 1929. Detroit Aircraft Corp. owned entire capital stock. Edsel Ford, William May and William Stout, invested in the venture in an effort to make Detroit the manufacturing center of the dirigible industry.

In 1943 Stout

sold the Stout engineering laboratory to Consolidated Vultee Aircraft Corporation becoming the Stout Research Division of Consolidated. He was named the director of Convair's research division through World War II.

In 1953, it was purchased by General Dynamics, and operated as

their Convair Division for most of its corporate history.
Convair's Atlas rocket was originally developed in 1957 as an ICBM for the U.S. Air Force. It was replaced in 1962 by the room-temperature liquid-fueled Titan II missile and the solid-fueled Minuteman missile. The Atlas

rocket transitioned into a civilian launch vehicle and was used for the first orbital crewed U.S. space flights during Project Mercury in 1962 and 1963.

The Atlas Rocket reflected the parent company of Convair, the Atlas Corporation.

In 1929, Atlas was a $12,550,000 investment

trust. The company was able to shrewdly weather the Wall Street Crash of 1929, and continue to grow through the 1930s and 1940s. The corporation was founded by Floyd Odlum and his brother-in-law Boyd Hatch.

Argus was founded as an investment holding company in 1945 by E. P.

Taylor with minority partners Colonel W. Eric Phillips, Wallace McCutcheon, Bud McDougald, and other less influential investors. The company was formed through Taylor's brewery empire, Canadian Breweries Limited, which was later known as Carling O'Keefe, and which Argus took

control over. Argus was also set up with the support of the American Atlas Corporation, itself a holding company.

Shortly after the death of McDougald in 1978, his widow and her sister sold their shares to Conrad Black while the widows were under the influence of what The Globe

and Mail called "slow-witted advisers". The transaction led to a high-profile falling out between the families. The move gave Black effective voting control and he became president of the corporation. The move also was financially lucrative for Black - his net worth grew to an

estimated $50 million in 1978. Black and his associates sold off most of the assets by 1985, and used the money to invest in media properties. In 2005, Argus's only asset was the Toronto-based holding company Hollinger Inc. Argus itself was 100 percent controlled by Ravelston

Corporation.

Hollinger Inc. was the parent company of Chicago-based Hollinger International, whose primary holdings included a group of Chicago newspapers. Its flagship paper was the Chicago Sun-Times.

In the 1980s Radler was in charge of the sale of Argus Corporation's

Dominion supermarket chain to The Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company, or A&P.

The forerunner of A&P was founded in the 1850s as Gilman & Company by George Gilman (1826–1901) to continue his father's leather tanning business; in 1858 the firm's address was 98 Gold Street in

Manhattan.

George Huntington Hartford (September 5, 1833 – August 29, 1917) headed The Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company (A&P) from 1878 to 1917. During this period, A&P created the concept of the chain grocery store and expanded into the country's largest retailer.

His son, Huntington Hartford developed Paradise Island, Bahamas

It is best known for the sprawling resort Atlantis.

Paradise Island is connected to the island of New Providence by two bridges that cross Nassau Harbour. The first was built in 1966 by Resorts International.

After the death of its longtime chairman, James Crosby, in 1986, the company was briefly controlled by Donald Trump, before being acquired by Merv Griffin in 1988. It was acquired by Sun International in 1996.

Sun International Hotels Limited is a resort hotel chain and casino

destination from South Africa created by Sol Kerzner, best known for its Sun City Resort near Rustenburg in the North West Province. He was also the Founder, Chairman, and CEO of Kerzner International. In 1996, Kerzner opened the hugely successful Mohegan Sun casino in

Uncasville, Connecticut in the United States and in 2000 opened the second phase of the project including a 1,200-room hotel through a joint venture with the Mohegan Tribe of Connecticut called Trading Cove Associates.

Mohegan's independence as a sovereign nation has been

documented by treaties and laws for over 350 years, such as the Treaty of Hartford secured by their Sachem (Chief) Uncas after his cooperation and victory with the English in the Pequot War (1637–1638).

The Mohegan and Narragansett tribes and the three English settlements in

New England that would become the Connecticut River Colony in 1639, participated in the treaty.
Thomas Hooker and the Rev. Samuel Stone led a group of about 100 who, in 1636, founded the settlement of Hartford, named for Stone's place of birth, Hertford in England.
This led to

the founding of the Connecticut Colony.

Other descendants of Thomas Hooker include Henry Hooker, John Hooker, Arthur Atterbury, Charles Atterbury Mary Hooker Pierpont, William Howard Taft, Timothy Dwight V, Aaron Burr, William Gillette, William Huntington Russell, Edward H.

Gillette, George Catlin, Emma Willard, J.P. Morgan, Rev. Joshua Leavitt, Roger Hooker Leavitt, Hart Leavitt, Frank Nelson Doubleday, John Turner Sargent, Thom Miller, Adonijah Rockwell and Nathan Watson.

William Huntington Russell (12 August 1809 – 19 May 1885) was an American

businessman, educator, and politician. Notably, he was a co-founder of the Yale University secret society Skull and Bones, along with Alphonso Taft.

William's older cousin, Samuel Russell, founded the successful merchant trading firm Russell & Co. in 1823.