Irwin Jacobs: The Eternal Opportunist

To reach Irwin Jacobs’ command post halfway up the IDS tower in downtown Minneapolis, you move through a series of elegant, high-ceilinged chambers hung with large, colorful paintings, pass several workstations staffed by busy assistants, and proceed along a short corridor lined with framed photographs, newspaper and magazine clippings, awards, and other testimony to a rich and productive life. When you finally reach Jacobs—one of the last of a breed of high-flying, hard-charging tycoons who have lately been eclipsed by pretenders such as Bernie Madoff and Tom Petters—you won’t find him in his office, but seated instead at a large round table tending a thick stack of documents, a sheaf of old-fashioned call-back slips, and a telephone.

“I don’t think I’ve spent 30 minutes back there in the last year,” says Jacobs, nodding toward the darkened office behind him. “It’s easier to communicate out here than from behind a desk.”

Not that communication has ever been a problem for the voluble Jacobs. Nor has he been a hard man to find of late. When flood-ravaged Iowans needed sandbags last summer, Jacobs appeared on local television, describing the shipment of millions of empty polypropylene sacks from one of his companies in the Twin Cities. When his brother, Shelly, a well-known restaurateur, died in July, Irwin was the family spokesperson quoted in the papers. In September, he stood beside T. Boone Pickens, the legendary Texas oilman, at a Minneapolis news conference announcing a wind power joint venture. When the media needed a man-bites-dog story to counter the awful economic news, the Star Tribune and The Wall Street Journal highlighted Jacobs’ flourishing liquidation business, which buys and sells the merchandise of desperate manufacturers and failing retailers at a discount. Finally, this past January, when Carl Pohlad died at the age of 93, Jacobs—Pohlad’s friend, confidant, and business partner—provided reporters with his heartfelt reminiscences.

“It’s been an unusual year,” Jacobs concedes with a sigh.