Greenwich resident Bradley Jacobs is a serial entrepreneur.
He built five companies into billion- or multibillion-dollar enterprises, including three publicly-traded companies: XPO Logistics, where he’s chairman and CEO; United Rentals, which he co-founded in 1997; and United Waste Systems, founded in 1989.
He also founded Hamilton Resources (UK) Ltd. and served as its chairman and chief operating officer, and co-founded his first venture, Amerex Oil Associates Inc., where he was chief executive.
In 2010, he formed Jacobs Private Equity LLC “to make a substantial equity investment in a single company with the potential for superlative value creation.”
He selected the logistics industry as a strong match to both his skill set and investment criteria, saying that “the industry is large, fragmented and growing faster than GDP, making it ripe to leverage scale and technology.”
In a previous interview with the trade journal Supply Chain Brain, Jacobs — who is worth about $3.7 billion, according to Forbes — talked about his approach to growth, which balances “organic” expansion through sales and marketing and acquisitions.
In December, XPO announced plans to spin off 100% of its logistics segment as a separate, publicly-traded company.
Interesting fact: According to Forbes, Jacobs, 65, is a trained classical pianist who studied piano and mathematics at Brown University before he dropped out of the institution.
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