The Way We Live Now: giving it away, giving it away, giving it away now, in the words of Warren Buffett's favorite songsmiths. Billionaires are giving it back! Minus the cost of goats, art sales, and hedge fund taxes.
How did American Crossroads, Karl Rove's "grassroots" fundraising operation, suddenly leap from $200 in monthly donations to a total of $4.7 million? Apparently 97% comes from four billionaires. A Republican Congress better reward them with some top-notch ponies! [Image: AP]
You probably thought all of those Russian oligarchs were rotting in prison. Not Andrey Melnichenko, whose $300 million bomb-proof yacht will be obscenely hitting up the world's hottest beach spots this summer and spoiling less-rich men's vacations.
Supermarket owner Ron Burkle and Bill Clinton were friends. They flew around on Burkle's private jet and made each other lots and lots of money. Now they have broken up, and they are not friends. And Burkle owes Bill money!
Last night 60 Minutes profiled Russian billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov—the man coming to save your New Jersey Nets! Bloomberg Markets profiles him in next month's issue. Is a grand media coming-out party by a Russian billionaire really a good idea?
Geico has always been known for their commercials, but they've never featured geriatric gazillionaires singing power ballads about customer service. Between acting, singing, and being stupid rich, Warren Buffet is now a triple threat.
Despite the millions and millions he's poured into the struggling New York Times, shady Mexican mogul Carlos Slim managed to bypass Bill Gates and Warren Buffett to nab the No. 1 spot on Forbes' 2010 list of world billionaires. [Forbes]
Hisham Talaat Mustafa, a billionaire Egyptian real estate tycoon, was sentenced to death last year for paying a hit man to murder his Lebanese pop star girlfriend, Suzanne Tamim. Luckily, someone's remembered that he's a billionaire. Let that man go!
You probably didn't imagine it was possible for perverted billionaire Jeffrey Epstein to look any worse than he already does. And yet he's managed to accomplish that feat, it seems. [PB Post, via]
Hundreds of celebs turned out on Friday evening to take part in George Clooney's "Hope for Haiti Now" telethon. But a few non-celebs were in the studio, too, including pharmaceutical billionaire (and noted sunglasses enthusiast) Stewart Rahr, aka "Stewie Rah Rah, the #1 King of All Fun":
When you're an indolent billionaire and your entire existence revolves around getting (young, female) celebrities to hang out with you—and you shell out a small fortune to make that happen—the least these stars could do is spell your name correctly, right? Well, at least if one of them ends up getting your name wrong, you can always have someone from your office notify them of the error so they acknowledge the mistake publicly:
Ron Perelman has never been known as a nice guy. If the city gave out an award each year to the most horrible husband in town, the bald billionaire would probably have a collection of gold statuettes sitting on his mantle. (He's been married and divorced four times, and he's been involved in messy lawsuits with each one.) But if you'd like evidence that Perelman also happens to be a horrible father and son-in-law, this sprawling article in the current issue of Fortune should do nicely. [Fortune]
Ellen Barkin sued ex-husband Ron Perelman in 2007 shortly after the couple divorced. (She claimed the temperamental tycoon had promised to finance her film production company, but then never followed through with it.) The verdict is in and Barkin is $3.4 million richer as of today. And Perelman is now only worth $9.996 billion, poor thing. [Gawker]
Hedge fund manager David Tepper is a rare breed. Not only did he earn $2.5 billion in 2009 while many of his peers just struggled to keep their heads above water, he still lives in the same New Jersey home he and his wife have occupied since 1990, he's yet to buy a vacation home, and he still sends his kids to public school. [BN]
Over the weekend, Rush & Molloy reported that money manager Jeffrey Epstein recently settled a lawsuit that had been brought against him by one of his alleged victims, an unnamed woman who says the pervy billionaire forced her to be his sex slave from the ages of 15 to 19. The terms of the settlement weren't disclosed. (Word has it Epstein has offered other accusers "a minimum of $150,000" in the past.) But his legal problems are far from over: A dozen other women, who all claim Epstein took advantage of them when they were minors, still have lawsuits pending against him.
Last May, billionaire financier Steve Schwarzman made a $100 million donation to the New York Library. The gift, which followed more than a year of blistering press coverage (remember: never let a Journal reporter into your home and allow him/her to interview the household help!) wasn't without one big string: The library's Beaux-Arts main branch on 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue had to be renamed in the Blackstone Group co-founder's honor. It's been more than a year since then, but clearly some people have no intention of ever calling it the "Schwarzman Building."
Many thanks to the faithful reader in Australia who directed us to this article in The Cairns Post which has some totally vital info on the whereabouts of media mogul Barry Diller's $200 million sailboat, EOS. It's located in lovely Cairns right now—as you probably could have guessed—along with Diller's crew of "two chefs, three engineers, nine deck crew and captains and stewardesses." But it won't be docked there for long! The paper reports that Diller will be climbing aboard the 304-foot beast in January when it sets sail for the Solomon Islands. [The Cairns Post]
Is reclusive money manager and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein looking to raise a little cash to pay off his mouting legal bills? One of the car collector's most prized vehicles, a 2003 Ferrari 575M Maranello, is now up for sale and can be yours for a very reasonable $159,000. John Connolly, the former NYPD detective turned investigative reporter who tipped us off to the sale, tells us that Epstein recently transferred to the car title to his pilot in an effort to conceal its (less-than-savory) origins. And, sure enough, that appears to be the case.
Congrats to shady money manager (and convicted felon) Jeffrey Epstein, who scored a big victory in court today:
