The list of billionaires and companies that donated to help build a gigantic golden ballroom where the East Wing of the White House once stood includes many familiar names: Amazon, Apple, Comcast, Miriam Adelson, the Winklevoss twins and Stefan E. Brodie.
Turns out Brodie is another billionaire. He and his brother Donald co-founded Purolite, a company that makes resins used for water purification in various industries, and sold it to chemical giant Ecolab in 2021 for $3.7 billion. When Steve Brodie appeared on Trump’s ballroom donor list, his notoriety increased, and now he and his brother are the newest additions to Forbes’ billionaires list. Assuming they owned the company 50%, each would have an estimated net worth of $1.7 billion, according to Forbes.
The Brodies founded Purolite in 1981 in Don’s basement in Pennsylvania. They found their niche: distributing high-end ion exchange resins, essentially specialized plastic spheres that are used for water purification, drug manufacturing, pollution cleanup and other processes.
Four years later, Purolite made the leap into manufacturing, opening a converted factory in Pontyclun, South Wales, in the United Kingdom. In 1987, the Brodies also began manufacturing in Philadelphia; A year later, they lost their factory in a fire, and subsequently rebuilt an even larger facility as demand increased.
In the 1990s, they opened more plants in newly liberalized China and Romania after the fall of the Iron Curtain, as well as sales offices in Eastern Europe and East Asia. But it was that first factory in the United Kingdom that brought trouble to a tropical paradise: in 2000, both brothers were accused of violating the US embargo against Cuba by sending resins worth about $2.1 million to the Caribbean island, mainly from the company’s British subsidiary, during the 1990s.
They were convicted in 2002, but challenged the verdict for several more years until the Third Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed their efforts. “The government’s evidence paints a compelling portrait of the defendant as president of a company that deliberately turned a blind eye to the U.S. entity’s involvement in the prohibited transactions,” the court wrote of Stefan in 2005. Both brothers were sentenced to probation.
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The legal problems did not slow Purolite, and the Brodies continued to expand, opening even more sales offices in Japan, Mexico, Jordan, Uzbekistan, South Africa, and India during the 2000s and 2010s. By 2021, they had averaged 14% annual revenue growth over five years, reaching $390 million in revenue and $160 million in adjusted EBITDA.
That year, they sold Purolite to Ecolab, a company with a current market capitalization of $72 billion specializing in water quality, hygiene and infection prevention, for $3.7 billion in cash.
After taxes, Forbes estimates that the sale netted each brother more than $1.3 billion. Ecolab spokesman Kyle Kapustka confirmed Purolite’s financial figures but declined to comment on the Brodie brothers’ valuation, noting that “there has been no relationship between the Brodies and Ecolab since” the transaction.
Longtime Republican donors, though modest, increased their political donations in 2022. They supported Florida Governor Ron DeSantis in his failed 2023 presidential bid, and subsequently shifted their support to Trump. According to an analysis of data from the Federal Election Commission, his total political donations in federal races amount to approximately $10 million and $2 million, respectively. Stefan’s wife, Elizabeth, appears to have donated another approximately $3 million.
At some point, both brothers requested a presidential pardon, which was denied in December 2023 by Joe Biden. However, their preferred candidate won the 2024 elections and their support did not stop. Steve and Elizabeth sent more than $1 million to pro-GOP groups in 2025, including $500,000 to a Trump-supporting political action committee (PAC) that reportedly hosted candlelight dinners for donors at Mar-a-Lago, the president’s Palm Beach club and residence since his first term. Steve is also listed as a donor for the construction of Trump’s ballroom, although the White House did not provide details on individual donations.
If you feel like it, it won’t be difficult to attend the next candlelight dinner event. Despite running a Pennsylvania-based company, the Brodie brothers bought mansions in South Florida in 1998 and 2000.
Steve’s, located on the private island of Fisher Island, has an estimated value of $10.7 million, Forbes notes, while Don’s, in Boca Raton, is valued at $6.5 million. In other words, they are both a short drive from Mar-a-Lago, and just a few hundred miles from the communist dictatorship that caused them so much trouble a quarter of a century ago.
This article was originally published in Forbes US
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