David Murdock (Dole)

Murdock was born on April 11, 1923, in Kansas City, Missouri; his father was a traveling salesman, and his mother took in laundry and scrubbed floors to help support the family. When he was young the family moved to Montgomery Township, Ohio, where he struggled in school, and at 14, two months into the 10th grade, he quit school; he then worked at a service station and was drafted into the Army in 1943.⁠[1][1][1][1][1]

After leaving the military at 22, he arrived in Detroit penniless and for a time lived in a park; with the help of a loan company employee, he borrowed $1,200 to buy a diner, fixed it up, sold it for a small profit and set out for California.⁠[1][1]

Heading west, Murdock stopped in Phoenix, then expanding rapidly with an influx of postwar transplants; he began buying cheap land and building affordable houses for the new arrivals, saying he could hardly finish a house before it was sold. After 17 profitable years in Phoenix, he moved to Los Angeles in 1968, where he turned to larger projects such as office buildings and began investing large stakes in public companies, later buying whole companies outright.⁠[1][1][1][1][1]

In 1974, Murdock led a group of dissident shareholders in taking control of Pacific Holding Co., which he took private in 1978. That same year he bought 19% of Iowa Beef Processor, which he then exchanged for 2.8% of Armand Hammer’s Occidental Petroleum; by 1981 he had become Occidental’s largest shareholder and repeatedly clashed with Hammer, and there was talk that he aimed to succeed Hammer, which he denied.⁠[1][1][1][1]

In 1980, Murdock bought the Bel-Air, Los Angeles, mansion Casa Encantada from the family of hotelier Conrad Hilton for $12.4 million, at the time a record price for a home in the United States, and renamed it “Bellagio House.”⁠[2][3]

In 1982, Murdock paid $413 million for a controlling interest in the ailing Cannon Mills, famous for its towels, in Kannapolis, North Carolina, and took over as its chairman. He cut costs and rescinded a number of employee benefits, including ending funding for an employee cancer-screening program, and required employees renting the company’s 2,600 houses to buy them or move within 90 days; union organizers accused him of running a fear campaign, but workers soundly defeated the unionization vote. He invested $30 million in redeveloping downtown Kannapolis, sold Cannon in 1986, and kept substantial commercial property in the area. From June 1982, he was also chairman and chief executive officer of the transportation equipment leasing company Flexi-Van Leasing.⁠[1][1][1][1][1][1][4]

In 1985, Murdock acquired the venerable but nearly bankrupt Hawaiian agricultural company Castle & Cooke, gaining a majority stake in Dole, and in July of that year became Dole’s chairman and chief executive officer. Castle & Cooke had introduced Hawaiian pineapples to the American mainland, and the acquisition gave him large landholdings in Hawaii, including most of the island of Lanai, home to a vast pineapple plantation.⁠[1][5][4][1]

Over the following three decades and more, he rebuilt Dole into one of the world’s largest sellers of fruit and vegetables. He was known for buying undervalued assets, making deep cuts to jobs and benefits, and selling companies at a profit after restructuring, and often said he had never had a boss in his whole life.⁠[1][1][1][1]

Murdock later spun off Castle & Cooke and its real estate business from Dole as a separate company, and from October 1995 was chairman and chief executive officer of Castle & Cooke, Inc. In 2000, he paid nearly $700 million to buy out Castle & Cooke’s other shareholders and took the company private, beneficially owning all of its capital stock from September 2000. On Lanai, he closed the pineapple operations to make way for resort and home development.⁠[6][4][7][4][7]

In 2000, Murdock sold Casa Encantada for $94 million to Global Crossing founder Gary WinnickGary WinnickGary Winnick (1947–2023) was an American financier who early in his career worked with Michael Milken at Drexel Burnham Lambert and in 1997 founded Global Crossing, a telecommunications company that laid undersea fiber-optic cable, serving as its chairman. During the internet bubble the company was at one point worth more than $50 billion; in January 2002 it filed for bankruptcy with $12.4 billion in debt. His sales of company stock drew a congressional investigation, and he later contributed to civil settlements, but he was not charged by the Securities and Exchange Commission or the Department of Justice.Open the full entry and his wife, again setting a record price for a home in the United States.⁠[3][2]

On March 26, 2003, Dole’s stockholders approved Murdock’s going-private merger agreement at a special meeting; on March 28, Murdock completed his acquisition of Dole in a transaction valued at $2.5 billion, and Dole’s stock ceased public trading at the close of business that day. He said that as a private company Dole would be free of the short-term pressures of the public equity markets.⁠[8][8][8][8][8]

In 2006, Murdock bought back a defunct former textile mill in Kannapolis and began building the North Carolina Research Campus on the site, which houses the David H. Murdock Research Core Laboratory for research on nutrition and extending human life spans. In the late 2000s he used Dole’s profits to build a $500 million food research center whose central mission was to study whether plant-based diets could extend life. Eight universities, including Duke University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, take part in research at the campus, but for years its growth fell short of the original projections.⁠[1][9][1][1][9][9]

Murdock himself, beginning in his 60s, ate only fruits, vegetables and occasionally fish, eliminating sugar and dairy, and once said he hoped to live to 125.⁠[1][1]

Murdock served as Dole’s chief executive officer until June 2007 and continued as chairman thereafter; from February to July 2004 he had also served as Dole’s president.⁠[4][4][4]

In June 2012, Murdock’s Castle & Cooke completed the sale of about 88,000 acres on Lanai, about 98% of the island, to Oracle chief executive Larry Ellison; the deal included two resorts, two golf courses and various commercial and residential buildings, and the price was not disclosed. Murdock kept his home on the island and the right to build a wind farm; in a statement, he said his 28 years on the island had been inspiring.⁠[10][10][10][7][10]

On October 31, 2013, Dole’s stockholders approved, at a special meeting, the acquisition by Murdock, then chairman and chief executive officer, of the approximately 60.5% of the shares that he and his affiliates did not already own for $13.50 per share in cash, with about 50.9% of the shares held by unaffiliated stockholders voting in favor. On November 1, Murdock completed the acquisition, at a total valuation of over $1.6 billion including net debt and fees, and Dole’s stock was delisted from the New York Stock Exchange at the close of business that day. Murdock said Dole would support his commitment to promoting a lifestyle and diet based on fruits, vegetables and proper nutrition for health and longevity.⁠[11][11][11][12][12][12][12]

Former public stockholders of Dole sued over the 2013 buyout. On August 27, 2015, after a nine-day trial, Vice Chancellor J. Travis Laster of the Delaware Court of Chancery ruled that Murdock and C. Michael Carter, Dole’s former chief operating officer and long-time general counsel, had breached their duty of loyalty to the public stockholders: the two had driven down Dole’s stock price ahead of the buyout and provided the company’s outside directors with knowingly false information, depriving the board and the stockholders of the ability to negotiate or reject the deal on a fully informed basis. The court ordered them to jointly pay $2.74 per share, about $148 million in total, plus pre- and post-judgment interest; the court found that Murdock’s financial adviser, Deutsche Bank, had acted improperly by favoring Murdock, but did not hold it liable for damages.⁠[13][13][13][13][13][13][13][13][13]

On February 1, 2018, Ireland’s Total Produce announced that it would acquire a 45% stake in Dole from Murdock for $300 million in cash, with the two sides sharing governance rights and equal board representation; Murdock remained chairman, and Total Produce chairman Carl McCann became vice chairman. The deal was completed on July 31, 2018, after approval by the European Commission; Murdock said he had complete confidence that Dole could draw on Total Produce’s expertise to grow its position worldwide.⁠[14][14][15][5][5]

On March 15, 2021, Murdock decided to retire from Dole’s board of directors, and Carl McCann became chairman. That year, Dole and Total Produce combined to form Dole plc, whose shares were approved for listing on the New York Stock Exchange; after the offering, former Total Produce shareholders held about 60.3% of the shares, while Castle & Cooke Holdings and The Murdock Group, controlled by Murdock, together beneficially owned about 12.8%, over which he had voting and dispositive power as trustee of a family trust.⁠[15][15][15][15][15]

On June 9, 2025, Murdock died at his ranch in Thousand Oaks, California, at the age of 102; Dole spokesman William Goldfield confirmed his death. At the time of his death, he was still Dole’s largest individual shareholder, with a 12.5% stake.⁠[16][17][17]

In its tribute, the City of Kannapolis said Murdock’s investment in the North Carolina Research Campus had been pivotal to the city’s revitalization.⁠[9]

Murdock developed the Sherwood Country Club in Ventura County, California (hiring Jack Nicklaus to design the golf course), and numerous other real estate projects, and developed Dole’s headquarters campus in Westlake Village. He also once owned the Hay-Adams Hotel in Washington and served as co-chair of the Joffrey Ballet in New York.⁠[4][6][1]