Mitchell P. Rales (born August 1956) is an American businessman and art collector. He co-founded Danaher Corporation with his brother Steven Rales in 1984 and the art museum Glenstone with his wife Emily Wei in 2006. Rales is also the chairman of ESAB, and the top limited partner of the Washington Commanders of the National Football League (NFL). His net worth was estimated by Forbes in mid-2024 to be $4.8 billion.
In 1979, Rales left his father's real estate firm to found Equity Group Holdings with his brother, Steven Rales. Using junk bonds, they bought a diversified line of businesses. In 1978, they changed the name to Diversified Mortgage Investors and then to Danaher in 1984.[6] In the 1980s, the AM side of radio station WGMS was sold off to Rales, who converted it WTEM, a sports-talk station, in 1992. In 1988, he made a takeover bid of Interco, which was the largest manufacturer of furniture and men's shoes in the U.S. at the time.[7][8] He later ended the bid after five months with a profit of $60 million.[9]
In 1995, Rales and his brother founded Colfax Corporation, an industrial pumps manufacturer later rebranded as Enovis in 2022.[10] He is a majority shareholder of Fortive, which split off from Danaher in 2016, and served on their board of directors until June 2021.[6][11] In 2017, Rales paid a fine of $720,000 to the Federal Trade Commission after inadvertently reporting purchases of shares in Colfax and Danaher were not above the filing threshold, which violated the Hart–Scott–Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act.[12] He had previously been fined $850,000 by the U.S. Department of Justice in 1991 for violating the same act after buying Interco.[13]
Glenstone, an art museum founded with his wife in 2006
In 2006, Rales and his wife Emily Wei Rales established the art museum Glenstone in Potomac, Maryland.[17][18] Rales had owned the land since 1986 and had previously made it his residence.[19] Glenstone displays the Rales's collection of post-World War II art, including paintings, sculptures, and both indoor and outdoor installations, and also functions as his personal residence.[20][21] In 2018, Glenstone finished a $219 million expansion which increased both the gallery space and the wooded land surrounding the galleries.[22] Rales donated $1.9 billion to the Glenstone Foundation in 2021, increasing the museum's asset value to $4.6 billion, nearly the same as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.[21] The museum is free to visit via online booking.[23][24]
Rales is Jewish and is one of four sons (Joshua, Steven, and Stewart) of Norman and Ruth Rales (née Abramson).[27][28] Norman was raised in the Hebrew Orphan Asylum of New York and later became a businessman, who sold his building supply company in Washington, D.C. to his employees in what was the first employee stock ownership plan (ESOP) transaction in the US. Norman was also a philanthropist, having founded the Norman and Ruth Rales Foundation and the Ruth Rales Jewish Family Service.[27] In 1988, he took a fishing trip in Russia and nearly died after their helicopter crashed.[19]
