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A hedge fund manager who successfully bet on the slump in the US housing market has earned a whopping $3bn ($1.5bn) in just one year!
52-year-old John Paulson tops the list of the 100 top-earning fund managers compiled by Trader Monthly magazine. The 100 fund managers earned $30.3bn last year, 26% more than they took home in 2006.
The Guardian has more.
At least he was right about Bear Stearns getting taken over.
With inflation running officially at 25,000 per cent (although that could be as high as 150,000 percent), Zimbabwe has just issued a $10 million note. The new note is the equivalent of about $4 at the dominant black market exchange rate.
In an effort to end chronic cash shortages and long, chaotic lines at banks and automated teller machines, the bank will issue the new notes on Friday along with 1-million and 5-million dollar bills. The highest existing note, introduced last month, is 750,000 Zimbabwe dollars. Link [via]
One of the most famous flawed postage stamps has sold for $825,000 at auction, slightly less than the record price ($977,500) another "Inverted Jenny" copy fetched at auction last month.
The rare 1918 24-cent stamp, depicting an upside-down Curtis JN-4 biplane known as "Jenny," was sold privately this week to a Wall Street executive who did not want to be identified.
Heritage Auction Galleries president Greg Rohan, who brokered the sale, said the buyer is the same collector who lost an auction last month in which another "Inverted Jenny" sold for $977,500. Rohan said his client, whom he described as not being a rare stamp collector, was glad to get another chance at the prized misprint.
"I suspect he's going to enjoy owning it and showing it to a few close friends," Rohan said.
Maybe he'll stick it on a postcard and mail it ala Brewster's Millions.
An article about how Google has changed the lives of it's employees including Bonnie Brown - a masseuse who joined the company in 1999 and after leaving the company in 2005 and selling her stocks is now a multi-millionaire - and still has stocks left!
"I'm happy I saved enough stock for a rainy day, and lately it's been pouring," said Brown, 52, who now lives in a 3,000-square-foot house in Nevada, gets her own massages at least once a week, and has a private Pilates instructor. She has traveled the world to oversee a charitable foundation she started with her Google wealth and has written a book, still unpublished, "Giigle: How I Got Lucky Massaging Google."
Apple love simplifying things - including their stores.
Their new store in Ginza, Tokyo - the first Apple store to have opened outside of the US has a set of glass elevators with no buttons. They simply go from the ground floor to the fourth floor stopping at each floor. Not the quickest way to get to the top but you'll get to see everything along the way. [via]
You gotta love how Bill Gates turns up on the Halo 3 launch night like he just got out of bed. Oh to be the world's richest man. [via]
The NY Times has an interactive chart showing the wealthiest Americans that have ever lived.
A list of faulty and dangerous Chinese products that have hit the news so far in 2007.
According to an article from online financial publication Sentido Comun, Bill Gates is no longer the richest man in the world. The title now goes to a Mexican magnate called Carlos Slim. After a surge in share prices he now has a wealth of $67.8 billion - $8.6 billion more than Gates' estimated $59.2 billion wealth. Gates had maintained the top spot for 13 years.
Over the weekend, 7-Eleven Inc. turned a dozen stores into Kwik-E-Marts, the fictional convenience stores of "The Simpsons" fame, in the latest example of marketers making life imitate art.
Those stores and most of the 6,000-plus other 7-Elevens in North America will sell items that until now existed only on television: Buzz Cola, KrustyO's cereal and Squishees, the slushy drink knockoff of Slurpees.
It's all part of a campaign to hype next month's opening of "The Simpsons Movie". Link
Update: Lots more photos here.
The cash machine (ATM) celebrates its 40th birthday today.
The world's first cash machine was installed on 27th June 1967 by Barclays Bank in Enfield, North London. The machine only dispensed £10 at a time. It was developed by John Shepherd Barron who was inspired by a chocolate vending machine.
Mr Shepherd Barron said: "I remember back in 1965 that I would always take money out of my bank on a Saturday morning. However, one Saturday I was one minute late at my bank and it was closed.
"I had to ask my local garage to cash my cheque. That night I started thinking that there must be a better way to get cash when I wanted it."
He continued: "I thought of the chocolate vending machine where money was put in a lot and a bar dispatched - surely money could be dispensed in the same way."
Forbes lists the 100 best (US) companies to work for in 2007.
Since 1980, Dennis Hope of the Lunar Embassy has been selling one acre plots of the moon for $19.99. In that time he has made $9 million!
So far, 4.25 million people have purchased a piece of the moon, including celebrities like Barbara Walters, George Lucas, Ronald Reagan, and even the first President Bush. Hope says he exploited a loophole in the 1967 United Nations Outer Space Treaty, which prohibits nations from owning the moon.
Jakhu, a director of the International Institute for Space Law, believes that entrepreneurs like Hope have misread the treaty and that the 1967 legislation came about to block property claims in outer space. Historically, “the ownership of private property has been a major cause of war,” he says. “No one owns the moon. No one can own any property in outer space.”
Hope refuses to be discouraged. And he’s focusing on expansion. “I own about 95 different planetary bodies,” he says. “The total amount of property I currently own is about 7 trillion acres. The value of that property is about $100 trillion. And that doesn’t even include mineral rights.”
India's richest man, Mukesh Ambani, is building a new home in the financial hub of Mumbai: a 60-storey palace with helipad, health club and six floors of car parking.
The building, named Antilla after a mythical island, will have a total floor area greater than Versailles and be home for Mr Ambani, his mother, wife, three children and 600 full-time staff.
Draped in hanging gardens, the building will have a floor for a home theatre, a glass-fronted apartment for guests, and a two-storey health club. As the ceilings are three times as high as a normal building's, the 173m (570ft) tower will only have 27 floors.
The building will replace his existing 14-storey home.
The Royal Canadian Mint has unveiled a monster gold coin with a value of C$1 million (£455,000). They claim it's the world's biggest, purest and highest denomination coin.
Weighing in at 100kg, the limited edition coin easily dwarfs its closest rival, the 31kg "Big Phil", which was made to honour the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra and has a face value of a mere 100,000 euros (C$150,000).
The Canadian mint introduced the mega-coin, which is the size of an extra-large pizza, alongside the one-ounce gold bullion coins it is mass producing at its Ottawa plant.
Originally designed to promote the new one-ounce coins, the colossal 100 kg coins will be produced in a very limited quantity. A U.S. precious metals distributor has ordered three and there is interest in Asia and Europe, the mint said.
Walmart tops this year's this years Fortune 500 with sales of over $350 billion!
Kuro5hin discusses why American currency is stupid. Some of the arguments also probably apply to other currencies as well.
A table comparing the world's largest shopping malls including the South China Mall (pictured above) which is currently the largest. The mall has 1,500 stores and has 7.1-million sq/ft of gross leasable area.
China already has the top two largest malls (with at least another two on the way) and it is predicted that within a few years, China will have 7 of the 10 largest malls.
It has been on the market for a couple of years (it remained unsold when I posted about it back in February 2005), but now two billionaires are in a bidding war over £70 million Updown Court.
The luxury house has 103 bedrooms, five swimming pools, a heated white marble driveway and is bigger than Buckingham Palace.
The two unnamed bidders are from the Far East and there could be a third potential buyer.
Tim and Edra Blixseth spent 25 years building a $2 billion life together and rather than pay lawyers to sort out their divorce they spent an afternoon in the Beverly Hills Hotel carving up their fortune. The article lists what ended up being his, what ended up being hers and what will be shared.
Goldman Sachs is well-known for dishing out large bonuses to its employees and due to a bumper year it is giving out even larger bonuses this year.
A total of $16.5 billion dollars will be shared out amongst its 26,400 employees. Regular pay plus bonuses will average $622,000 this year but most employees will get less than that. The people receiving the largest bonuses will be the top 25 "golden managers" who will receive a whopping $25 million and it is reported that some of the top performers may get as much as $100 million! Wow! [via]
A new study by the U.N. development research estimates that 2% of adults have more than half the world's wealth, including property and financial assets.
"We've estimated that the richest 2 percent of adults own more than half of global wealth, while the bottom half own 1 percent," said institute director Anthony Shorrocks.
He likened the situation to that where, in a group of 10 people, one person has $99, while the remaining nine share $1.
"If you think income has been distributed unequally, wealth has been distributed even more unequally," Shorrocks said.
A list of the oldest family-run companies in the world. Of the companies listed all are at least 225 years old; four have lasted in the same family for more than a millennium. The oldest company is actually not Kongo Gumi, it is Hoshi Ryokan (also the world's oldest hotel and founded in 717, not 718). Kongo Gumi sadly went into liquidation in January 2006.
Coca-Cola, Microsoft and IBM top the list of the 100 top brands of 2006. View the list here.
In the second quarter of this year, Exxon Mobil earned a staggering $10.4 billion in profit, that's $1,318 a second! At today's gas prices in the US that's enough to drive a Hummer H3 from Los Angeles to New York 3 times.
The 10 dumbest online businesses that turned into successes such as the goggles for dogs, the Million Dollar Homepage and designer diaper bags.
Apparently, Bill Gates wishes that he wasn't the world's richest man.
"I wish I wasn't ... There's nothing good that comes out of that," the co-founder of Microsoft told a conference of online advertising executives in Redmond, Washington, where the software company has its headquarters. "You get more visibility as a result of it."
Why stop at pirating a company's products when you can pirate the whole company. I first heard about this story on the Buzz Out Loud podcast on Friday and stumbled across it again this morning. The company in question was the Japanese giant NEC and the company that pirated them was based in China. The fake Chinese company pirated existing NEC goods and even went as far as developing their own line of goods under the NEC name. NEC isn't sure how much was made from the operation but believes it to be a high figure.
It has been revealed that Lee Raymond, the chairman and chief executive officer of Exxon Mobil Corp., earned $144,573 for each day of the 13 years he served at the top of the oil company. He received more than $686 million from 1993 to 2005 and received more that $400 million in the final year of his contract. I want that job! [via]
Forbes presents the world's most luxurious credit cards. These cards are only available to the richest of people (generally those who spend over $250,000 a year) and offer a raft of perks.
The cards include the much speculated American Express Centurion card, also known as the Black Amex, and is available to only 10,000 people and the Coutts & Co. purple card which is so exclusive that only about 100 people are said to have been invited, including The Queen.
Forbes presents the world's 2000 largest public companies.
Goldman "Goldmine" Sachs has become the first major investment bank to see its average salary top half a million dollars. Last year they paid out $11.7bn (£6.7bn) to its 22,425 employees resulting in an average salary of $521,000 - a 12 per cent increase on the $466,000 average.
News.com.au: Too much money to tax
Microsoft founder Bill Gates, the world's richest man, said today the tax office in the US has to store his financial data on a special computer because his fortune is so vast.
"My tax return in the United States has to be kept on a special computer because their normal computers can't deal with the numbers," he said at a Microsoft conference held in Lisbon.
"So I am constantly getting these notices telling me I haven't paid something when really it is just on the wrong computer," he added in comments broadcast on television.
Oh to have the same worries as Bill.
Google has retaken first place in the 2005 global poll of the world's most influential brands, while the eBay-owned Web phone service Skype makes its debut at No. 3.
Fortune present the 100 best US companies to work for. [via]
The bosses of Google, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, last year paid themselves a wage of £1.1bn. That works out at £21million a week which, based on a 35-hour week, is £604,000 an hour. Not bad. [via]
Called the accidental zillionaire by Wired magazine, here's the story of how Paul Allen became the third richest man in America.
The Times: Fat fingered typing costs a trader’s bosses £128m
Clumsy typing cost a Japanese bank at least £128 million and staff their Christmas bonuses yesterday, after a trader mistakenly sold 600,000 more shares than he should have.
The trader at Mizuho Securities, who has not been named, fell foul of what is known in financial circles as “fat finger syndrome” where a dealer types incorrect details into his computer. He wanted to sell one share in a new telecoms company called J Com, for 600,000 yen (about £3,000).
Unfortunately, the order went through as a sale of 600,000 shares at 1 yen each.
Forbes presents the homes of the billionaires (includes all the usual suspects).
Toronto Star: New York 'air rights' soar to record
Two New York City developers have agreed to pay $430 (U.S.) a square foot for "air rights" to construct a 35-storey apartment building in Manhattan offering views of Central Park from its top floors.
The figure brothers William and Arthur Zeckendorf have agreed to pay is more than twice the going rate, the New York Times reported in Wednesday's editions. A square foot is just under a tenth of a square metre.
The air rights would cover the zone over Christ Church and the Grolier Club at Park Avenue and East 60th Street.
The Methodist church will get about $30 million in the deal and the Grolier Club $7 million.
"This massive billboard painted on the grass between the main runways greeted passengers arriving and departing from Johannesburg International Airport. A world first, this 5000 sq.m billboard required 1000 liters of paint and 9 separate permits from different regulatory authorities due to the sensitive nature of the site."
Sky.com: Yours For Just £300,000
A garage is on sale in London for more than twice the cost of a first-time buyer's home.
The £300,000 'property' in Chelsea's Egerton Terrace measures just 20ft by 9ft.
Patrick Aschan, of Cluttons estate agency said: "Freehold garages are rare and this one is part of a pair - the other one sold some years ago.
The average cost of a first-time buyer's property is £134,000, according to the Council of Mortgage Lenders.
A list of the top 10 richest men of all time. Bill's in there, but not at the top. [via]
The new Neiman Marcus Christmas catalogue is out and it offers such crazy things as a a private convert with Elton John for $1.5m (travel & production expenses not included, although you do get to keep the piano) and a rideable train set that starts at $200k.
What a great way to market a product. This particular marketing campaign is from Malaysia. [via]
A scary report about how much the supermaket Tesco knows about you.
[Their database] contains details of every consumer in the UK at their home address across a range of demographic, socio-economic and lifestyle characteristics...whether they choose to shop at the retailer or not
MSN Money discusses the 5 most outrageously overpaid CEOs.
SimplyHired is the largest jobs database on the planet and contains over 3.6m jobs. Unfortunately they are all in the US. [via]
