Michael John Cudahy ( ); March 24, 1924 – March 11, 2022) was an American

entrepreneur Entrepreneurship is the creation or extraction of economic value in ways that generally entail beyond the minimal amount of risk (assumed by a traditional business), and potentially involving values besides simply economic ones. An entreprene ...

, business executive, and philanthropist.

Early life, family and education

Born in

Milwaukee Milwaukee is the List of cities in Wisconsin, most populous city in the U.S. state of Wisconsin. Located on the western shore of Lake Michigan, it is the List of United States cities by population, 31st-most populous city in the United States ...

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, in 1924, Cudahy was the son of John Cudahy, United States ambassador to

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and

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. His grandfather was

Patrick Cudahy Patrick Cudahy Jr. ( ); March 17, 1849 – July 25, 1919) was an American industrialist in the meat packing business and a patriarch of the Cudahy family. He was also the founder and namesake of Cudahy, Wisconsin. Biography Cudahy was born on ...

, founder of the Patrick Cudahy Meat Company. On August 2, 2007, WTMJ-AM in Milwaukee reported that Michael Cudahy was one of several private investors considering purchasing

Midwest Airlines Midwest Airlines (formerly Midwest Express Airlines) was an airline in the United States headquartered in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, that operated from Milwaukee Mitchell International Airport between 1984 and 2010. For a short time, it also op ...

Career

Along with Warren Cozzens, Cudahy founded Marquette Electronics in 1965 and served as chairman and CEO. The company went

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in 1991. After starting with only $15,000 in capital, the company went on to have over $350 million annually in sales. This company created the nation's first central electrocardiographic system at

Northwestern University Medical School Northwestern or North-western or North western may refer to: * Northwest, a direction * Northwestern University, a private research university in Evanston, Illinois ** The Northwestern Wildcats, this school's intercollegiate athletic program ** No ...

. The machine became standard in hospitals throughout the United States. The company was also noted for having one of the first on-site

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s in the nation. In 1982, he and Warren bought the failing Patient Monitoring Business Unit from GE (then known as General Electric Medical Systems Division) and combined it with the existing business (primarily diagnostic equipment). In 1998, however, he sold Marquette Electronics (by then known as Marquette Medical Systems) to GE for $810 million. The company exists today as part of the Clinical Systems division of GE Healthcare, a subsidiary of the American conglomerate. After stepping aside at his company, Cudahy focused his energies on philanthropy and serving on the boards of other companies. In 1999, according to

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(SEC) filings, he invested $10 million in TomoTherapy a

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start-up. It went public on May 9, 2007, with the stock symbol TOMO. Mr. Cudahy's 10% interest was valued at more than $100 million by September 2007. He told the story of the founding of Marquette Electronics in the book ''Joyworks'' (2002; ).

Personal life and death

Cudahy was still actively working in the lead up to his 90th birthday in March 2014. Cudahy died on March 11, 2022, at the age of 97.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Cudahy, Michael 1924 births 2022 deaths 20th-century American businesspeople 21st-century American businesspeople American philanthropists Businesspeople from Milwaukee Cudahy family