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Podcast: New Books in Business, Management, and Marketing
Episode: Matt Garcia, "Eli and the Octopus: The CEO Who Tried to Reform One of the Worldâs Most Notorious Corporations" (Harvard UP, 2023)
Description: The poignant rise and fall of an idealistic immigrant who, as CEO of a major conglomerate, tried to change the way America did business before he himself was swallowed up by corporate corruption.At 8 a.m. on February 3, 1975, Eli Black leapt to his death from the 44th floor of Manhattanâs Pan Am building. The immigrant-turned-CEO of United Brandsâformerly United Fruit, now ChiquitaâBlack seemed an embodiment of the American dream. United Brands was transformed under his leadershipâfrom the âoctopus,â a nickname that captured the corrupt power the company had held over Latin American governments, to âthe most...