This ‘Big-Hearted Banker’ Emerged From the Collapse a Billionaire
Leonard Abess gave $60 million to his staff and shot to fame. Now he’s a billionaire who avoids the spotlight.
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As the 2008 financial crisis raged, one Miami banker briefly shot to fame, not infamy, by selling his company and showering $60 million on people below him, including the clerks and tellers.
That act made Leonard Abess an aberration of the era, a banker so good or lucky he escaped an industry on the brink of collapse with both fortune and reputation intact. Within months, Barack Obama praised Abess in his first address to a joint session of Congress, prompting a standing ovation.