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Alfred LowensteinAlfred Lowenstein (March 11, 1877 - July 4, 1928) was a Belgian soldier, aviator, sportsman, and one of the most powerful businessmen during the early decades of the 20th century. Born in Brussels, Belgium, he was a wealthy man by the time World War I erupted in Europe. He joined the Belgian armed forces and following the army's retreat, Captain Alfred Lowenstein was sent to London, England where he was placed in charge of military supplies. At war's end, he maintained a residence in England where he ran an investment business that made him one of Europe's most powerful financiers. He partnered with the Canadian-born investment house of Sir James Dunn in several ventures, the duo emerging with more than 1,000,000 profit from their 1920s investment in British Celanese alone. Lowenstein also made an enormous fortune providing electric power facilities for developing countries worldwide through his Belgian-based company, "Socit Internationale d'nergie Hydro-lectrique" (SIDRO). By the mid 1920s, Lowenstein's reputation was such that he was consulted by heads of state from around the globe. The British government made him a Companion in The Most Honourable Order of the Bath. In 1926, he established "International Holdings and Investments Limited" that raised huge amounts of capital from wealthy investors wishing to get aboard his bandwagon of success. However, Lowenstein was rebuffed in his attempt to take over a Canadian company called Brazilian Traction, Light, and Power, a huge operation building infrastructure in Brazil. However, while flying on his private plane across the English Channel, Lowenstein went to the rear of the plane to use the lavatory. After a noticeable length of time passed, one of his employees went to check on him and found that he had vanished through the plane's rear door and had plunged several thousand feet to his death. News of Lowenstein's demise caused panic selling in his corporations' publicly traded shares that immediately plummeted in value by more than fifty percent. His body was recovered a few weeks later and with no evidence of foul play there was much speculation over what was labeled as a suicide. The New York Times hypothecated that a growing absent mindedness noted by many of Lowenstein's acquaintances may have caused him to walk out the wrong door of the plane. Because he had left behind a tangled web of business ventures, many of which were highly leveraged, others theorized that his business empire was on the verge of collapse. Some even asserted that corrupt business practices were about to be exposed and Lowenstein therefore committed suicide. None of these theories were ever proven. In 1987, William Norris wrote Lowenstein's story in a book titled The Man Who Fell From the Sky. Lowenstein, Alfred Lowenstein, Alfred Lowenstein, Alfred
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