US billionaire Ross Perot, a two-time independent candidate for the White House, died on Tuesday, July 9, at age 89, his family said in a statement. "In his business as in life, Ross was a man of integrity," wrote his relatives, adding that the Texan had died early in his home in Dallas, surrounded by his family.
The man was suffering from leukemia, diagnosed in February, according to the Dallas Morning News. A US presidential candidate in 1992, he managed to win 18.9% of the vote, precipitating the defeat of Republican George Bush against Democrat Bill Clinton. He won only 8% of the vote in 1996 when he ran under the colors of the formation he had founded, the Reform Party.
A fortune in IT
Ross Perot had built his fortune, recently estimated at four billion dollars by Forbes magazine, in the field of computing. If he practiced bonhomie in public, the businessman had at the same time expressed throughout his life a fierce determination.
Born in Texas during the Great Depression on June 27, 1930, this self-made man described himself by announcing his second candidacy in 1996 as "a Texas boy who lived the American dream". After studying at the Naval Academy, he started selling computers at IBM.
In 1962, he founded his own company, Electronic Data Systems (EDS), which he steered with an iron fist before selling it for $ 2.5 billion to General Motors in 1984. He then founded another computer company, dubbed Perot Systems, sold in 2009 to Dell for $ 3.9 billion. Married, Ross Perot was the father of five children.
A triangular in 1992
His candidacy in 1992 provoked a first in American presidential history: three candidates from opposing sides had shared the stage of a debate. The independent Ross Perot had then won the bet, cutting through its tone with the more pompous style of President Bush.
A defender of public debt, he was one of the biggest detractors of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) that Donald Trump has renegotiated with Mexico and Canada.
With AFP and Reuters