Gary Winnick

Gary Winnick, a former junk-bond salesman who in 1997 founded Global Crossing, a telecommunications company that laid fiber-optic cable underwater around the world to speed internet and phone traffic, but that imploded five years later under billions of dollars in debt, died on Saturday November 4 2023 at his estate in Los Angeles. He was 76. Winnick was Chairman and CEO of Pacific Capital Group which he founded in 1985. . He was previously SVP of Drexel Burnham, a pioneer in the creation of new financial products and innovative companies. studied business at C.W. Post College (now L.I.U. Post) in Brookville, also on Long Island, and earned a bachelor’s degree in 1969. He worked in his brother-in-law’s furniture business and, in the early 1970s, went to Wall Street as a retail broker at Burnham & Company.he moved to Los Angeles in 1975 and worked at the Beverly Hills office of what was by then Drexel Burnham Lambert. H3 served as chief assistant to Michael Milken He was Founder and Chairman of Global Crossing, which laid the first underwater fiber optic network around the world and joint-ventured with Microsoft and Softbank Corporation to build a high-capacity telecommunications network in Asia. Global Crossing went public in August 1998, and its shares peaked at $64 in 2000, valuing the company at $47 billion. but the company lost $3 billion. In 2002, two major pension funds, which had lost about $110 million in Global Crossing securities, sued the company, accusing it of having manipulated financial results. Two years later, as part of a $325 million settlement with the funds, Mr. Winnick paid a reported $30 million. Winnick is survived by his wife, Karen (Binkoff) Winnick, a children’s book writer; his sons, Adam, Alexander and Matthew; his sister, Susan Brody; and eight grandchildren.