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Robert Thomson is Heir Apparent at the Wall Street Journal
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Alleged Spitzer Call Girl Sues Girls Gone Wild
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The Bill Gates portfolio – beyond Microsoft
Business manager Michael Larson has a portfolio of billions of dollars and a client list of one.
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Larson, a former bond investor with Putnam Investments, picks stocks for Cascade Investment LLC, whose sole owner is Bill Gates.
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Larson is known as a conservative investor who maintains a low profile. However, regulatory filings by Cascade provide a glimpse into the decisions he and his boss are making.
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At the end of 2007, Cascade reported $4.2 billion in publicly reported securities. More than $570 million was in Berkshire Hathaway, the company headed by Gates’s good friend Warren Buffett.
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Cascade also holds a 10.8 percent stake in GAMCO Investors, Inc., a firm led by Mario J. Gabelli. Gates and Gabelli have done business in the past. In 1999, Cascade loaned $25 million to Gabelli’s local telephone venture, the Lynch Interactive Corporation.
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Cascade’s biggest investment was in the Canadian National Railway, with holdings worth more than $1.6 billion.
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Other bets by Gates’s investment vehicle included the Mexican media company Grupo Televisa, the Mexican brewer Fomento Economico Mexicano and the waste-management company Republic Services.
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Gates has invested in several energy ventures, including ethanol producer Pacific Ethanol and PNM Resources, a utility based in Albuquerque, NM. Another investment, Minnesota-based Otter Tail Corporation (NASD: OTTR), provides electric power, as well manufacturing and health services.
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Cascade has lesser investments in two companies that have seen their stock price decline in recent months – Six Flags Inc. (NYSE: SIX) and Planetout (NASD: LBGT). PlanetOut, a publisher targeting gays and lesbians, announced earlier this month that it would sell its magazine and book divisions and focus on its online activities.
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Cascade Investment was so-called because “Cascade” is a generic business name in the Northwest. No sense in drawing undue attention.
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Larson, who has worked for Gates since 1994, generally stays out of the limelight. However, in a rare interview with Fortune in 1999, he said he had the best job in the world.
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“It’s pure investing,” he said. “No marketing. Not much management. And client relations is limited to one guy.”
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The Bill Gates Portfolio Beyond Microsoft
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Wesley Snipes Gets 3 Years for Tax Evasion
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Nabokov’s son to publish final manuscript
His dying father, Vladimir Nabokov, had commanded him to destroy his still-unfinished, final novel.
Hint: Click in map to explore connectionsStory continues below interactive map
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(requires Java)MAP HINTS: Click expands a name. Control+Click centers map on a name. Solid lines are current relations. Dotted lines are former relations. For advanced tools choose Tools > Options from the menu at top. More help. Not seeing the maps? Please go here to check for the latest version of Java.Instead, an agonized Dmitri Nabokov placed the novel – in the form of 50 index cards – in a Swiss bank vault. Now, more than 30 years later, the writer’s only child told Der Spiegel magazine that he had decided to publish The Original of Laura.
Speaking from his winter home in Palm Beach, Fla. this week, the 73-year-old Dmitri Nabokov justified his decision, saying, “I’m a loyal son and thought long and seriously about it. Then my father appeared before me and said, with an ironic grin, ‘You’re stuck in a right old mess – just go ahead and publish!’”
He told the magazine that he had finally made up his mind to do so.
Over the years, Dmitri Nabokov has described wrestling with the decision about what to do with The Original of Laura, which he has called “the most concentrated distillation of [my father’s] creativity.” As Nabokov’s literary executor, he said he felt a duty to share it with the world; as his son, he felt a duty to honor his father’s last wishes.
Dmitri Nabokov, who divides his time between Palm Beach, Fla. and Montreux, Switzerland, is a staunch advocate of his father’s literary legacy, and has translated many of his novels, plays, poems, lectures and letter.
In celebration of Vladimir Nabokov’s centennial in 1999, he appeared as his father in Terry Quinn’s Dear Bunny, Dear Volodya, a dramatic reading based on the personal letters between Nabokov and literary and social critic Edmund Wilson. Performances took place in New York, Paris, Mainz, and Ithaca.
Yet he is a multi-faceted personality with many other accomplishments. A profile that appeared in the Harvard Crimson in 2005 described a complex character.
Those who know him describe him as tall and imposing, with a face like his father’s, and one editor calls him “his father’s very best translator.”
But Dmitri has accrued a set of accolades and interests all his own.
“His love of fast boats and fast cars and helicopter skiing made him like a James Bond figure,” says Deanne Urmy, editor of Nabokov’s Butterflies, a collection of Vladimir’s writings which includes translations by Nabokov.He is best known as an opera star. After graduating from Harvard with a concentration in history and literature, Dmitri Nabokov served briefly in the U.S. military as an instructor in Russian before deciding to pursue his dreams as a performer.
He made his operatic debut in 1961 in the same Milan performance of La Boheme as the now legendary Luciano Pavarotti. Among the highlights from his operatic career: performances at the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona with soprano Montserrat Caballé and acclaimed Catalan tenor Jaume Aragall, better known as Giacomo Aragall.
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Philanthropist Alberto Vilar convicted in fraud caseNovember 19, 2008 at 3:52pm
A trial that has riveted the world of philanthropy ended today with the conviction of Alberto W. Vilar, a man who pledged, and sometimes gave, millions of dollars to the arts.
Fisker CEO says Tesla Motors’ “lawsuit is nonsense”
The legal battle over high-end green car technology continued on Thursday as Fisker Motors’ CEO Henrick Fisker called a lawsuit filed by Tesla Motors “nonsense.”
Hint: Click in map to explore connectionsStory continues below interactive map
MAP HINTS: Click expands a name. Control+Click centers map on a name. Solid lines are current relations. Dotted lines are former relations. For advanced tools choose Tools > Options from the menu at top. More help. Not seeing the maps? Please go here to check for the latest version of Java.The press release issued by Fisker Automotive claimed it was Tesla Motors that “breached the arbitration agreement in its contract with Fisker by filing these meritless claims in San Mateo County court.”
Earlier this month Tesla Motors filed a suit against Fisker Automotive, its design subsidiary and two of its top executives, Hendrick Fisker and Bernhard Koehler, alleging fraud, breach of contract and violation of a confidentiality agreement.
Fisker KharmaFisker said today that its Fisker Kharma, a plug-in hybrid sports coupe, would be delivered on schedule by the fourth quarter of 2009 and that it would “vigorously defend” itself against the allegations made by Tesla in the suit.
Foreshadowing what may be its legal defense, Fisker quotes Alan Niedzwiecki, a Fisker director and president and CEO of Quantum Technologies, the designer of the plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV) technology being used in the Kharma.
“In January of 2007 I first met Henrik Fisker. Soon thereafter, I became convinced that a strategic alliance joining together Quantum’s (PHEV) unique technology position with Fisker’s design expertise could be leveraged into a company capable of launching the first premium sports sedan for the (PHEV) segment. In August 2007 that vision became a reality with the inception of Fisker Automotive Inc., effectively combining Quantum’s (PHEV) drivetrain expertise with a remarkable design from Fisker Coachbuild LLC.”
Kleiner Perkins has invested millions in the Fisker venture with partner Ray Lane on the Fisker board. Lane stated that he is “confident that Fisker Automotive continues to be a tremendous investment opportunity. The design innovation of Henrik Fisker combined with the hybrid drive train experience of Quantum is unique in the automotive market.”
Henrick Fisker’s 19 years of design experience includes work on BMW E-1 electric car in 1991, the BMW Z8 and the Aston Martin V8 Vantage.
In our earlier report we noted the tangled web of Silicon Valley bigwigs involved in the companies.
Elon Musk, co-founder of PayPal and Zip2, is an investor and the chairman of Tesla. Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, as well as Jeffrey Skoll, former president of eBay and executive producer of Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth, are investors in Tesla. Steve Westly, a former controller for the state of California and a former eBay exec, is a director.
In January, Fisker announced a multimillion dollar investment by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and the appointment of Kleiner partner Ray Lane as a director at Fisker Automotive. At the time, Lane said Kleiner believed “that Fisker Automotive’s groundbreaking, forward-thinking design stands to pave the way for a greener and more efficient future.” The day following the announcement of the Kleiner investment Fisker unveiled the Fisker Kharma plug-in hybrid sports car at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit.
The lawsuit puts Kleiner Perkins in an interesting position as an investor in both Google and Fisker. Additionally, Kleiner adviser Al Gore is a director at Google while fellow Google board members Sergey Brin and Larry Page are investors in Tesla.
Nabokovs Son to Publish Final Manuscript
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