REUTERS/Carlo Allegri
- Koch Industries confirmed Friday morning that 79-year-old David Koch, brother to 83-year-old Charles Koch, has died.
- The Koch family legacy includes the second-largest company in the US, Koch Industries, along with numerous political and policy institutions and billions of dollars spent toward advocacy, with an emphasis on conservative and libertarian policies including free trade and small government.
- After David’s death, his nephew Chase, son of Charles, is in line to take his uncle’s place as a key figure in the Koch network. As Politico Magazine predicted in December 2018, Chase will likely shift his family’s legacy away from conservative policy toward broader libertarian ideals.
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The "Koch brothers" became a household name thanks to the conservative legacy, network, and $100 billion company spearheaded by David and Charles Koch. Now, Koch Industries has confirmed that 79-year-old David had died, after a 27-year battle with prostate cancer.
With 83-year-old Charles remaining at the helm of the second-largest company in the US, hundreds of billions of dollars, a massive GOP voting bloc, and an exhaustive list of advocacy and policy initiatives running on the Koch family’s dime, it’s time for another Koch to step up and succeed David in the family business.
With all of David’s children currently under the age of 25, and Charles’ eldest child, Elizabeth, uninvolved in the Koch Industries or network at large, that role falls to Chase Koch, 42, Charles’ son.
Chase Koch has managed to stay under the radar for the first 42 years of his life.
Screenshot YouTube/CNBC
Charles’ son doesn’t even have his own Wikipedia page (his sister Elizabeth, a writer and publisher, does). While Elizabeth calls herself apolitical, Chase has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to Republican congressional candidates, including Senators Mike Lee of Utah, James Lankford of Oklahoma, and Tim Scott of South Carolina, Politico reported.
He has not given any money to President Donald Trump’s campaigns, which isn’t surprising, given that his father and uncle have taken overt steps to distance themselves from the GOP after Trump won the primary, and oppose many of his proposed ideas and policies, including his tariffs, travel ban, and stance on immigration.
What he lacks in notoriety, Chase has made up for in his family’s business itself, spearheading its venture-capital arm, Koch Disruptive Technologies.
Facebook/Texas A&M University
Chase graduated from Texas A&M in the early 2000s with a degree in marketing, unlike his father, uncle, and grandfather, the dynasty-builder Fred Koch, who all studied engineering at MIT. After graduation, Chase remained in Austin, Texas, playing Led Zeppelin covers with a garage band.
As the first child of the Koch brothers to join the family business, Chase took lead of Koch Disruptive Technologies after years of avoiding Koch Industries as a career option, because he was "too proud to tap into the Koch network" right away, The Seattle Times reports Chase told a meeting of the Wichita Rotary Club earlier this month.
Chase is less focused on the tangled web of political policy in Washington, D.C., choosing to live and work in Wichita, Kansas.
Associated Press
Chase and his sister grew up in Wichita, where Politico reports his father taught them via audiobooks from great economic thinkers who embraced libertarian ideals.
While he may have nodded off listening to Austrian economist F.A. Hayek at age 12, Chase returned to Wichita after his years in Austin and worked a number of high-level positions in Koch Industries, including mergers and acquisitions, tax structuring, agronomics, and trading, The Seattle Times reports, which led him to where he is now.
See the rest of the story at Business Insider
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Source: Business Insider – ktenbarge@businessinsider.com (Kat Tenbarge)