What Is Jon Corzine's Net Worth?
Jon Corzine is an American finance executive, philanthropist, and political figure who has a net worth of $50 million. At his peak, Jon Corzine was worth around $500 million. Unfortunately, after forfeiting around $300 million in a divorce settlement and spending $100 million on various political campaigns, Jon is now significantly less rich than he was at one time.
Jon Corzine worked for Goldman Sachs from 1975 until he left in 1999. He served as CEO from 1994 to 1999. When Corzine left Goldman Sachs, he reportedly received around $400 million as his share of the company's initial public offering.
Jon served as a United States Senator from New Jersey from 2001 to 2006 and governor of the state from 2006 to 2010.
Early Life
Jon Corzine was born Jonathan Stevens Corzine on January 1, 1947, in Taylorville, Illinois. He is the son of Nancy June and Roy Allen Corzine, Sr., and he grew up on a small family farm in Willey Station, Illinois. After completing high school at Taylorville High School, where he played basketball and football, Jon enrolled at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. There, he was a member of the Phi Delta Theta fraternity and graduated with honors in 1969. After college, Corzine enlisted in the United States Marine Corps Reserve and served from 1969 to 1975. While in the reserves, he enrolled at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and earned a Master of Business Administration in 1973.
Goldman Sachs
In 1976, Corzine joined Goldman Sachs as a bond trader. He then became the co-manager of the Fixed Income, Currencies and Commodities Division. He became a partner in 1980 and a senior partner in 1994. He also served as chair of the presidential commission on capital budgeting for Bill Clinton and served as Chairman of the United States Department of the Treasury's borrowing committee.
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Political Career
In 1999, Jon was forced out of Goldman Sachs. He then announced he would be campaigning for a New Jersey Senate seat and won the nomination and then the election over his Republican opponent, Bob Franks. He was sworn into the Senate in January 2001. His campaign was the most expensive in U.S. history in terms of Senate campaigns. During his tenure in the Senate, Corzine co-authored the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. He was also a sponsor of the Start Healthy, Stay Healthy Act, supported gun control laws, was the chief sponsor of the Darfur Accountability Act, and coauthored a tax-cut proposal that lowered the marginal tax bracket for the lowest of income earners. Additionally, Jon chaired the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee from 2003 to 2005 and was a member of the Committees on Banking, Intelligence, the Budget, Foreign Relations, Environment, and Energy and Natural Resources.
Corzine then decided to run for the New Jersey Governor position in 2005. His opponent was Republican Doug Forrester. The two spent $73 million on their gubernatorial campaigns, and the main campaign issues were property taxes and the Bush administration as Corzine tried to link his opponent to Bush. Corzine won the race with 54% of the vote and took office in January 2006. While governor, he focused on balancing the budget and attempted to address the crisis of municipal funding. He also championed expanding governmental health and education programs.
Corzine was one of several United States Governors who were early supporters of Hillary Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign. He raised over $1 million for her campaign but then became a prominent spokesperson for Barack Obama once Obama won the Democratic nomination.
In 2009, Corzine ran for re-election in the 2009 New Jersey gubernatorial election against Republican challenger Chris Christie. The race ended up being quite close, but ultimately, Corzine lost to Christie by around four points.
Philanthropy
In addition to his political career, Corzine has also been active with a number of philanthropic and civic organizations. He currently serves as a member of the International Board of Covenant House and is on the board of the New Jersey Reentry Corporation. He has also served on the boards of several organizations, such as the New Jersey Performing Arts Center, the New York Philharmonic, the New York Child Study Center, and the NYC Partnership. He currently serves on the board of trustees of the University of Chicago and is an ex-officio member of the board of trustees of Princeton University. He also served at Fairleigh Dickinson University as chairman of an advisory board that is working to establish a graduate school of public and global affairs.
Other Work
In 2010, Jon was appointed CEO and Chairman of MF Global, a multinational futures broker and bond dealer. However, the group collapsed only a year later and declared bankruptcy, one of the ten biggest bankruptcies in U.S. history. Corzine subsequently had to appear before a House committee to answer questions regarding the collapse. Ultimately, he agreed to a settlement order by which he paid a $5 million penalty for his role in the company's collapse.
Personal Life
Corzine married his high school, Joanne Dougherty, in 1969 when he was 22. During their 33-year marriage, they had three children together – Jennifer, Josh, and Jeffrey. Jon and Joanne separated in 2002, and their divorce was finalized in November 2003.
As a divorce settlement, Jon agreed to give Joanne $350 million in cash and assets, almost exactly half of the fortune he earned during his decades at Goldman.
In 2004, Corzine began dating psychotherapist Sharon Elghanayan. The two married in November of 2010 in a ceremony presided over by Chief Justice of the New Jersey Supreme Court, Stuart Rabner. In 2014, his youngest son, Jeffrey, died by suicide in Mexico.
Hamptons Mansion/Tepper Revenge
After making $400 million from the Goldman IPO AND getting fired in 1999, Jon and his then-wife, Joanne, retreated to their 7-acre oceanfront estate in the Hamptons town of Sagaponack. They spent years renovating and improving the property's 6,000-square-foot mansion.
In 2002, Joanne filed for divorce. One of Joanne's biggest stipulations in the divorce was that she get the Hamptons house. In the end, Corzine grudgingly agreed. In 2010, Joanne sold the home for $45 million to one of Jon's former Goldman Sachs colleagues, a man named David Tepper, who, in addition to earning billions as a hedge fund manager, absolutely HATED Jon Corzine for repeatedly rejecting him for partnership.
In what many have called an extremely cold act of revenge, Tepper flattened the former Corzine mansion and replaced it with one double its size.
