John Kluge

"“Can it really be true that nobody has made a billion dollars purely by playing the stock market?” After all, Forbes lists “Investments” as the primary source of wealth of seven of the wealthiest Americans in the billion-dollars-and-up category. A look at the profiles that Forbes also provides, however, makes it clear that these indi¬ viduals did not make their fortunes primarily by spotting attractive stocks to put into their personal portfolios. Among the other activities that the “investment” specialists have engaged in over the years are: • Starting a charter airline and selling it for a $ 104 million profit. • Building the world’s biggest hotel. • Assembling a broadcasting empire and selling it for a S3.3 billion gain. • Booting out management of Columbia/HCA following an investi¬ gation of alleged Medicare fraud. • Expanding a single drugstore into a chain and selling it for $50 million. • Engaging in hostile takeovers. • Restoring a foundering bank to health and merging it to form Na¬ tionsBank. In short, Forbes's definition of an investment, for purposes of compil¬ ing its wealthiest-Americans list, is not buying a stock and waiting for it to go up. Rather, the term means taking a substantial stake in a company and actively influencing its direction. Active influence may even include owning the business outright and running it. Indeed, John Kluge, one member of the billionaires’ club whom Forbes characterizes as having made his fortune primarily in investments, told the magazine: “I’m an op¬ erator, not an investor.”15"

"Between our lunch and the time Murdoch finalized buying into Fox, he’d gone to Australia, and then on his way back to New York stopped for two days in L.A. He called and I invited him to come over to the studio for a chat. And, here’s where my North Star of serendipity once again showed up: three seemingly disparate events threaded themselves into the opportunity of a lifetime—at least my lifetime. First, that particular day was Michael Milken’s annual investors’ conference, called by some the Predators’ Ball. Milken was at that time the biggest financier of companies in the United States. He had previously called to say he had just financed John Kluge’s buyout of public shareholders at Metromedia, which owned six blockbuster television stations. They wanted to have a reception away from the place where the conference was being held, and Milken asked, as a favor, if I would give them a soundstage to have it on. The afternoon of that day, Murdoch arrived in my office. And finally, as soon as Rupert sat down in my conference room to talk, my assistant buzzed me to say that Mike Milken and John Kluge were in my reception room to say hello before their party."