Billionaire Profiles
$35 Billion Gone.
Ouch, that’s gotta hurt.
Eike Batista the Brazilian tycoon who announced that he would become the world’s richest man by around now has lost 99% of his fortune. This is a record breaking drop in wealth.
However, according to estimates he is still worth about $200 million. I suppose that you could survive on that if you cut back on the Starbucks visits.
“His loss of credibility is explained by not delivering on the results promised when he listed his companies,” Elad Revi, an investment analyst at Spinelli SA, said by telephone today from Sao Paulo. “There was a chain reaction: he lost credibility in one, then he lost it in all of them.”
You can watch the Bloomberg crew discuss Batista’s downfall here.
Captain Courageous aka Ted Turner
Controversy has always followed Ted Turner. People either hate him or love. Personally, I have been a fan ever since he won The America’s Cup back in the 1970s. He epitomizes what a billionaire should be in my humble opinion.
He took advantage of the time away from his baseball team by entering the 1977 America’s Cup race. In a dramatic series of contests in mild weather, his outdated yacht Courageous defeated its competition with clever, bold tacking to win the right to defend the America’s Cup against the world’s challenger. In somewhat less calm weather, Turner and a crew comprising veterans in their fifties and young men won the America’s Cup. Turner was too drunk to stand up during the victory celebration and was remembered for falling from his seat to the floor during presentations of the competition’s awards. (Source)
To be clear it wasn’t so much the victory as it was his post-race celebratory style that won my admiration. (Hey, did I mention that I was still in high school at that point?)
This was on 60 minutes last night. Bill got pretty emotional about his old friend Steve.
By the way, if you haven’t seen the movie about their early rivalry, Pirates of Silicon Valley, you should. It’s a B-movie but a pretty good one.
British billionaire Richard Branson cross-dressed to work as a flight attendant for a rival airline after losing a bet to Malaysian airline tycoon Tony Fernandes. During the flight Branson served drinks, meals, and made flight announcements during the six-hour trip.
This is far from the first time that Sir Richard has gone drag and one begins to suspect that he rather enjoys it.
Watch the video:
It’s not looking very good for the latest film version of The Great Gatsby judging by the reviews. I had my concerns from the very start when Baz Luhrmann was chosen as director. Baz is s musical specialist not someone with much experience directing dramas. I’m just not a fan of musicals.
“Luhrmann’s 3-D visual flourishes feel superfluous: Occasionally, words pop out across the screen as Nick feverishly writes Gatsby’s tale … None of it contributes to a sense of immersion.”
“Luhrmann’s direction of his actors cudgels every instinct of naturalness out of them and pushes everyone, even as instinctively genuine an actress as Mulligan, toward overblown characterizations and stilted line reading.”
“She’s down-to-earth pretty (a tad mousy) rather than unattainably glamorous. She does well in Daisy’s most challenging scene, in which she has to oscillate between the desires of two impossible men, the monomaniacal Gatsby and the overentitled Buchanan. But it’s possible to forget she’s in the movie.”
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