Elizabeth founded a publishing company in Brooklyn, called Catapult Press, that specialized in experimental fiction and other niche books. She retained a seat on the board of the Charles G. Koch Foundation and sometimes attended the foundation’s meetings in Washington, DC. One Koch lobbyist recalled Elizabeth’s visit to the public affairs office. She arrived hours early, and the lobbyist was given the job of entertaining her. They sat in his office and made small talk. She commented approvingly on the office’s feng shui, and the lobbyist found her to be pleasant company.
It seems that Elizabeth’s contact with Charles Koch was both limited and strained. In 2008, she wrote an essay for the literary magazine Guernica that was a first-person account of a woman having an unpleasant reunion with her father after not seeing him in years.
Elizabeth wrote:
Last week my father came into town. I hadn’t seen him in six years. I got drunk. He watched me eat dinner, his eyes wide, mouth open. My boyfriend said the chicken bone cracked between my teeth like a candy cane.
The next morning, my father said good-bye. He kissed my cheek. “You have a considerable hunger.”
“You don’t say,” my boyfriend replied.
As a child, Elizabeth had been an eager pupil of Market-Based Management. As an adult, she left the burden of working at Koch Industries to her brother.
* * *
After his successes on the fertilizer trading desk, Chase Koch got a promotion. Steve Packebush moved Chase into a new role in international development. Chase began traveling the world, helping Koch Fertilizer expand its reach. During this time, Koch Fertilizer built a network of terminals in Brazil, Mexico, Australia, the United Kingdom, and France.
Pleased with these results, Packebush promoted Chase Koch again, in 2012, to lead a division that made specialty products, called Koch Agronomic Services. This job put Chase into contact with venture capitalists, inventors, and the heads of start-up companies. They made high-end chemicals that were designed to counteract nitrogen fertilizer’s extravagant inefficiency. Most nitrogen fertilizer leached straight into the air and local streams after farmers sprayed it on their soil. Nitrogen runoff from midwestern farms coursed into the Mississippi River and down into the Gulf of Mexico, where the high nitrogen levels stoked algae growth that sucked oxygen out of the water and created enormous “dead zones” that decimated aquatic ecosystems. Koch bought a company called Agrotain that made additives to slow the process and keep nitrogen in the soil.
Chase loved his work at Koch Agronomic Services as much as he loved trading. It was thrilling to meet with inventors and get pitched on their new products. Chase was more than just Charles Koch’s son now. He had a track record of his own in the fertilizer business. He had done sales calls in Iowa. He had traded UAN supplies from Wichita. He’d helped build terminals around the world. He knew what he was talking about.
Packebush called Chase Koch into his office one day and offered Chase the biggest break of his career. Koch Fertilizer was going to spin off its energy business, which bought natural gas, and create a stand-alone fertilizer unit. Packebush wanted Chase to become president of the new Koch fertilizer division.
“Packebush said, ‘You’re ready to take the keys to the beast,’ ” Chase recalled.
Chase became CEO of his own company with three thousand employees and operations around the world that earned several billion in revenue each year. The business owned multibillion-dollar fertilizer plants that required around-the-clock supervision and vigilance to prevent lethal accidents. It was easily one of the most important divisions of Koch Industries, ranking in size only behind Georgia-Pacific and Flint Hills Resources.
Packebush was offering control over all of this to Chase Koch, if he wanted the job.
“What I was thinking at the time,” Chase recalled, “was, Oh, shit.”
* * *
For the first time, Chase would be the public face of Koch Industries. The occasion was a groundbreaking ceremony in October of 2013 at the company’s fertilizer plant in Enid, Oklahoma. The company erected a small tent outside the plant for the event, and Chase arrived in a suit and tie, a level of formality that was rare for senior Koch executives. This was one of the first big public speeches of his career.
Koch Fertilizer was investing $1.3 billion in the Enid plant to expand its footprint and ramp up production. There was a gold rush in the fertilizer business at this time, thanks to the crash in natural gas prices, which boosted profits. Koch was pressing its advantage, expanding its plant before competitors could enter the field and steal its market share. This was the kind of announcement that companies liked to publicize with ribbon cuttings and other ceremonies that drew local civic leaders. Under the small tent, the folding chairs were filled by Enid’s civic leaders, plant employees, and local law enforcement officers.
It was an awful day to make a speech. Strong, gusting winds forced everyone to cling to their papers, and Chase’s hair was blowing into a mess when he stepped onto the small wooden stage and walked to the podium. He delivered his remarks gamely, however, speaking over the wind, and then turned to watch the earth mover perform its ceremonial role. Chase also delivered remarks to a ballroom filled with more of Enid’s business leaders. This time the sound was better. Chase read from a script, which had the oratorical verve of a press release:
“Going forward, we are very, very excited about the future of Koch Fertilizer,” Chase said. “We see positive trends in global demand as the population grows from seven billion to nine billion over the next thirty to forty years, driving the need for more efficient products, more services, and more innovation as we keep up with this trend.”
Chase Koch didn’t come across as trying to impress anybody. He acted like the same guy whom so many people had encountered over the years: quiet, low-key, and humble. As he took over Koch Fertilizer, Chase revealed his leadership style, one that was developed over decades of hard work, often in solitary spaces like the tennis court or trading desks—he was quiet, focused on the matter at hand, and driven. If he came across as subdued, he also seemed like someone who was increasingly comfortable in his own skin. He could never escape the Koch name, but he was starting to wear it with a sense of ease.
Chase Koch’s confidence might have come, in part, to changes in his personal life. On November 1, 2010, Chase married a Wichita girl named Annie Breitenbach, a registered nurse who had gone to college at the University of Kansas. Leslie Rudd noticed a change come over Chase after the wedding. Annie Koch clearly had a mind of her own. She made her own decisions. Her independence seemed to give Chase his own foundation as an adult. “I think that [Annie] was an ideal wife for Chase,” Rudd said. “She’s smart. She’s got resolve, and she’s got her own opinion; it’s not influenced by Charles or Liz. I think Chase feels that. He feels he’s got support beyond his family.”
Chase and Annie Koch spent $3 million to buy a seventy-acre parcel of land in Wichita for their home. Much of the property remained undeveloped. Chase Koch now had his own family estate. He became a father when he and Annie had their son. A second son followed.
In the small circle of Wichita business leaders, a lot of people were talking about Chase Koch. His rise to the highest levels in Koch Industries seemed assured. Ever since Chase was a kid, the specter had hung over his head—“WELCOME CROWN PRINCE”—and now he was on his way to filling the job. The pathway to Koch’s senior executive suite seemed to be short, straightforward, and predictable.