carl lindner and his brother robert used their family's dairy business to build a chain of convenience stores in cincinnati, ohio, called united dairy farmers (udf). from there they went into the financial and communications fields. through their holding company american financial group (afg) they control great american insurance, a holding company for a group of property and life insurance companies that constitute the twenty third largest insurer in the country. afg owned the fourth-largest bank in cincinnati, provident bank, and the second-largest savings and loan (hunter savings, later merged into provident. the lindners also control seventy shopping centers around cincinnati. they once owned bantam books and the major newspaper of cincinnati, the "cincinnati enquirer". charles keating, also of cincinnati, was a close friend and colleague of the lindners.