Richard Riordan
| Richard Riordan | |
|---|---|
Riordan (right) with Magic Johnson at Magic Johnson Theatres opening at Baldwin Hills Mall in 1995
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| 39th Mayor of Los Angeles | |
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In office July 1, 1993 – July 1, 2001 |
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| Preceded by | Tom Bradley |
| Succeeded by | James Hahn |
| Personal details | |
| Born |
Richard Joseph Riordan May 1, 1930 Queens, New York, U.S. |
| Political party | Republican |
| Spouse(s) | Eugenia Warady (divorced) Jill Noel (divorced) Nancy Daly (divorced, deceased) Elizabeth Gregory |
| Children | five (two deceased) |
| Residence | Los Angeles, California, U.S. |
| Alma mater |
Princeton University (A.B.) University of Michigan (J.D.) |
| Religion | Roman Catholicism |
| Military service | |
| Service/branch | United States Army |
| Years of service | 1952–1955 |
| Rank | First Lieutenant |
| Battles/wars | Korean War |
Richard Joseph "Dick" Riordan (born May 1, 1930) is an American investment banker, businessman, investor, and politician who served as the 39th Mayor of Los Angeles, California serving from 1993 to 2001. He is a member of the Republican Party. To date, Riordan remains the last Republican to serve as Mayor of Los Angeles.
Riordan, an Irish-American, was born in Flushing, New York and raised in New Rochelle in Westchester County, New York. He moved to Los Angeles to begin work as an attorney for the downtown law firm of O'Melveny & Myers in 1956, leaving in 1959 to become a partner of Nossaman LLP.
Riordan's investment activities in the mid-late 1970s and early 1980s focused primarily on venture capital opportunities in the computer, medical and semiconductor sectors. In 1982, he co-founded, together with J. Christopher Lewis, a private equity firm which is now called Riordan, Lewis & Haden.
During this time as an attorney for another venture capitalist, USC Professor Chuck Cole, Riordan made an early investment in an Irvine, California technology startup founded by Orange County entrepreneur Jon Wimer. Together, Riordan and Cole invested the first $100,000 in Triconex, whose business plan called for a fault-tolerant controller called the Tricon. The company was not an early success because of the cost of developing and certifying such a complex system. After the industrial accidents at Bhopal and Chernobyl however, there was a need for an industrial safety system and it turned out that the Tricon platform was the right product for the times. With an engineering team led by Gary Hufton, the Tricon eventually became the world's leading industrial safety system, a ranking it still holds today. Chuck Cole was an active member of the board while Triconex was an independent company, and the company was sold for 90 million in January, 1995 to a British company. This was just one of the many successful ventures that Riordan provided the seed money for during his career.
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