William F. Farley

Farley was born the elder of two children to a working-class Irish Catholic family on October 10, 1942, in Pawtucket, Rhode Island.[1] He was the son of John Farley, a postal worker and part-time musician, and Barbara Farley, a receptionist.[2]

Farley attended grade school at St. Leo's School in Pawtucket and later became a recruited high school athlete and student at St. Raphael Academy,[2] his father's high school. He graduated from St. Raphael's in 1960.[3]

Farley graduated from Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine in 1964, where he majored in government and earned an academic scholarship. At Bowdoin, he was a varsity athlete in football, swimming, and baseball.[4]

After graduating from Bowdoin, Farley traveled across the U.S. and Mexico for six months, eventually settling in Los Angeles.[1] In Los Angeles, Farley sold Collier's Encyclopedia door to door.[2] Within two years he was the company's leading salesman and was appointed head of training for the national sales force.[5]

After attending Boston College Law School, Farley moved to New York City, where he took a job in the mergers and acquisitions division of NL Industries, a manufacturing company with a number of subsidiaries. At NL Industries, Farley did analysis on potential acquisition targets and rose to director of long range planning and acquisitions. In 1972, Farley was transferred to Chicago, where he functioned as the regional manager of NL Industries' metals division.[4]

In 1976, while Farley was working at Lehman Brothers, NL Industries was searching for a potential buyer for Anaheim Citrus Products Co., a small subsidiary that produced pectin, a thickening agent used in foods and other products. In October 1976, at age 34, he executed his first leveraged buyout for $1.9 million. To facilitate the buyout, Farley founded Farley Industries, a private holdings company headquartered in the Sears Tower in Chicago.[6] After six months, Farley had raised the funds for the buyout, including his life savings of $25,000, plus $1.7 million in loans and notes borrowed against the company assets.[7]

Within two years after the buyout, Farley had doubled Anaheim Citrus sales. In 1977, Farley purchased Baumfolder Corporation, a struggling manufacturing company, using funds from equipment sales at Anaheim Citrus. Farley quit Lehman Brothers and moved to Ohio to oversee the Baumfolder turnaround.[1][2] He later sold Baumfolder to its employees for $10 million.[8]

In 1982, Farley purchased NL Metals, the same group he used to run at NL. The purchase price was $118 million, making NL Metals the first in a line of significantly larger acquisitions that Farley would make over the next decade.[5]

Farley Industries soon encompassed numerous companies within the manufacturing, mining and apparel industries. The largest acquisition was Northwest Industries for $1.4 billion in July, 1985.[8] By the late 1980's Farley Industries had 50,000 employees and nearly $4 billion in annual sales.

In 1988, Farley completed a hostile takeover of West Point Pepperell, Inc., a textile company that had been family-owned in West Point, Georgia, and surrounding communities for more than 100 years. Farley paid $1.5 billion for the company, eclipsing the mark of $1.4 billion he had paid a year prior for Northwest Industries. Farley financed his purchase of 95.3 percent of the company through bank debt and high-yield bonds. [9] Less than four years later, the company filed for bankruptcy, and Farley resigned. [10]

Although Farley eventually sold most businesses within the Farley/Northwest Holding Corp. conglomerate, he kept Fruit of the Loom Inc.[11][12]

In March 1987, Farley completed a successful $565 million public offering of Fruit of the Loom shares.[13]

During his tenure at Fruit of the Loom Farley pushed to move the majority of Fruit of the Loom's manufacturing outside of the US. In 1998 a class-action lawsuit by a New England–based health care employees pension fund alleged that Farley had misled investors to engage in insider trading.[14]

Farley served as president and CEO of Fruit of the Loom from 1985-99, when he was ousted by the board of directors.[15]

In May 2007, Farley launched a brand-new multi-level marketing health and beauty company based out of Salt Lake City, Utah.

Zrii, a Sanskrit word which means "light, luster, splendor, and prosperity", was endorsed by lifestyle guru Deepak Chopra and the Chopra Center for Wellbeing. The basis of its namesake product was a juice extracted from the amalaki fruit, which is grown exclusively in India at the base of the Himalayas.[16]

In February 2009, 35 employees staged a walkout of Zrii headquarters and demanded that Farley resign.. In December 2009, Farley won $400,000 in a settlement agreement with LifeVantage Corporation, where many of his former employees were hired.[16]