Andrew McKelvey, founder of Monster.com, dies at 74

Andrew McKelvey, the billionaire founder and former chief executive of Monster Worldwide Inc., died early Thursday morning in New York after a long battle with pancreatic cancer, his family said. He was 74.

In 1967, McKelvey founded a yellow-pages advertising business called Telephone Marketing Program. Later known as TMP Worldwide, the company acquired The Monster Board and Online Career Center in 1995, and four years later the job-recruitment Web site Monster.com was launched to great success.

In 2003, TMP Worldwide became Monster Worldwide. The New York-based company employed 5,200 people in 36 countries and reported $1.35 billion in revenue in 2007.

McKelvey left the company in 2006 amid questions about his role in backdating employee stock options. In January of this year, McKelvey agreed to relinquish much of his voting stake in Monster and reached a monetary settlement with the company, federal prosecutors and the Securities and Exchange Commission.

McKelvey was also a philanthropist. The McKelvey Foundation has helped more than 600 students attend colleges across the country. Since 2001, he had donated $25 million to the Andrew J. McKelvey Lung Transplantation Center at Emory University in Atlanta.

He has given $3 million to the Andrew J. McKelvey Lower School at the Hewitt School in New York, and provided funding for Big Brothers Big Sisters of America and for the Andrew J. McKelvey Campus Center at Westminster College in New Wilmington, Pa., his alma mater.

McKelvey was born in New York in 1934.

His survivors include four children and six grandchildren.