Saturday, October 24, 2015

Bad Celebrity Investments That We Remember

By Cornelius Nunev


Celebs are individuals, too. They make poor investments and drop cash like the rest of us. Here are some bad celeb investments individuals remember.

Mark Twain

One poor investment was made by the first modern celebrity in America, Mark Twain. In the last 19th century, he got a Paige Compositor that was supposed to be a typesetter faster than the standard Linotype. It wound up not working well because it had over 18,000 parts and needed to be cared for too much. Over 11 years, Twain spent $150,000 to $300,000 on the machine, which was a ton of money back in his day.

Investment from Jay-Z

The big investment mistake made by Jay-Z would not completely end until Dec. 2010 when out-of-court settlements and legal battles finally ended. He bought land to produce a luxury hotel in New York City. The hotel was going to be 150,000 square feet and would be for luxury guests in the Chelsea neighborhood. He started the project in 2007 right before the economic crash. He wound up defaulting on the $52 million loan and shut down the project due to lack of funds. Hotel partners had to give the lender the property back.

Massive losses for Bono

Bono was extremely profitable in his investments with Facebook, BioWare, Pandemic Studios and Yelp. The only issue was that his confidence grew into investments in Forbes, Inc. ($300 million) and Palm ($460 million). These investments only brought a $25 million return for Bono, and he was called "the worst investor in America" by 24/7 Wall Street. He is the managing director for entertainment equity firm Elevation Partners presently.

Poor investment by Larry King

Talk show host King became embroiled in a life insurance scam that involved flipping policies for profit. King gave up two policies worth a total of $15 million, but only made back $1.4 million on the sale.

Bernie Madoff scam

Bernard Madoff is currently in jail for 11 federal felonies and serving a 150 year prison sentence. His $65 billion Ponzi scheme stole from over 200 investors, many of which were celebrities. Now, all those investors are attempting to determine how to proceed to make up for the lost cash.

Poor investment from Burt Reynolds

The most popular movie star of the 1970s, Burt Reynolds wound up handling the urge many celebs face: opening a restaurant chain. The chain was PoFolks, and outlets existed in California, Texas and Florida. By the late 1980s, however, the cupboard was bare and Reynolds was out $15 million. His eventual divorce from Loni Anderson and diminished star power led to a 1996 bankruptcy. Even though he was more than $10 million in debt, bankruptcy court allowed him to keep his $2.5 million mansion and all of his personal property that Anderson had not already claimed.

The last poor investment

Debbie Reynolds decided she wanted to open a Las Vegas casino and hotel in 1991, although she did not realize that being off the strip would make it extremely hard to stay in business. It was called the Debbie Reynolds Hotel and Casino, but she ended up selling it for $10 million to the World Wrestling Federation in 1998 after a 1997 bankruptcy. She wound up broke, and was even worse off when having to sell all her film career memorabilia in 2010 when her museum went bankrupt.




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