Bruce E. Toll | |
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Born | April 29, 1943 |
Nationality | United States |
Education | B.A. University of Miami |
Occupation | businessman |
Known for | co-founder of Toll Brothers |
Spouse(s) | Robbi S. Toll |
Children | Michelle Toll O'Flanagan Elizabeth Toll Feuer Wendy Toll Topkis Jennifer Toll Schulman |
Parent(s) | Albert Toll Sylvia Steinberg Toll |
Family | Robert I. Toll (brother) |
Bruce E. Toll co-founded the American luxury homebuilder company Toll Brothers.
Born to a Jewish family, the son of Sylvia (née Steinberg) and Albert Toll, he grew up in Elkins Park, Pennsylvania. His father, who emigrated from Ukraine, was a millionaire investor who lost everything in the Wall Street Crash of 1929. In 1965, Toll graduated with a B.A. from the University of Miami. In 1967, Toll and his brother Robert I. Toll founded Toll Brothers with a focus on building luxury homes ($500,000+) starting with a plot of land in Caln Township, Chester County, Pennsylvania given to them by their father. They grew the business using a conservative financial model always including a 10 percent expense cushion in all their project cost estimates, never assumed price appreciation during construction, and always used conservative sales estimates. Bruce was responsible for the book-keeping and Robert the legal side of the business. In the late 1980s, they expanded out of the Northeast to Washington, D.C. and in the mid-1990s, to California. The Tolls are credited with mass-producing luxury housing by taking a few standard home styles and increasing the scale several fold. Toll Brothers later expanded into building “active-adult” communities for the elderly affluent and urban high-rises for the newly affluent (Toll Brothers City Living). In 1998, Toll sold 5 million shares of Toll Brothers for $186.6 million although still remaining its second largest shareholder and vice-chairman. In November 2013, Toll Brothers purchased Shapell Homes (founded by Nathan Shapell) for $1.6 billion. As of 2013, Toll Brothers has sold over 40,000 homes in twenty-two states.
Using the proceeds from his stock sale, he has diversified his investments. Toll is principal of real estate investor and developer, BET Investments, and has a diversified pool of investments including: National Renal Alliance of Franklin, Tennessee, a for-profit chain of 12 kidney-dialysis centers; Premier Kids Care Inc. of Atlanta, Georgia, which sells human-growth hormones; Puresyn Inc., a Malvern, Pennsylvania company which develops gene vaccines and gene-therapies; Colonial Management Group L.P., a Orlando, Florida chain of 50 methadone-treatment centers; UbiquiTel Inc., a Conshohocken, Pennsylvania company that sells Sprint-branded PCS wireless service in the West and Midwest; Aquilent Inc., a Laurel, Maryland company which provides IT services to the government; several automobile dealerships in the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania area including Reedman-Toll Auto World of Langhorne, Pennsylvania, one of the largest dealerships in the USA.