Henry Taub | Founder of ADP, 83

Henry Taub, 83, who turned his small business into one of the world's largest payroll-processing firms, died Thursday at a New York hospital.

Mr. Taub was a 21-year-old accountant when he started Automatic Data Processing in 1949. The Roseland, N.J., firm now has about 550,000 clients around the world and nearly $9 billion in revenue.

Mr. Taub got the idea for his company when one of his accounting clients was late paying its workers because its payroll manager was ill. He soon started handling payrolls for several local companies and, because he didn't own a car, he often delivered payrolls by taking a bus to his clients.

A few years later, a young insurance salesman named Frank Lautenberg - who eventually would become a U.S. senator from New Jersey - joined the firm and soon rose through its ranks, helping to sell large businesses on the concept of letting ADP handle their payrolls.

"We worked a lot of seven-day weeks, but Henry never let [his brother] Joe or me leave the place without cleaning up and preparing for the next day," Lautenberg told the Record of Woodland Park. "He was brilliant, very disciplined."

Mr. Taub, who lived in Tenafly, N.J., served as ADP's chief executive officer until 1975 and was a member of its board of directors from 1961 to 2009. At the time of his death, he was serving as its honorary chairman, a post he had held since 1986.

He also served on the boards of several major national companies and was a co-owner of the New Jersey Nets basketball team for nearly 20 years.

- AP