Saturday, 24 October 2015

Marvel Over These Bad Celebrity Investments

By Cornelius Nunev


Celebs and their money are often parted. Here are a few of the most memorably poor celeb investments, ever.

Investing as Mark Twain

One bad 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 cash back in his day.

Hotels by 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 ended 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.

Enormous losses for Bono

Bono was extremely successful in his investments with Facebook, BioWare, Pandemic Studios and Yelp. The only problem 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 known as "the worst investor in America" by 24/7 Wall Street. He is the managing director for entertainment equity firm Elevation Partners presently.

Massive Larry King investment

A life insurance scam that flipped policies was something King accidently got behind. He made $1.4 million regardless of the belief that he gave up two policies worth $15 million.

Madoff scammed them all

More than 200 investors, such as celebs were taken in by Bernard Madoff's $65 billion Ponzi scheme. Madoff is now in jail serving 150 years for 11 federal felonies, while celebs and lower-profile investors are still looking for ways to make up for their sizable financial loss.

Another bad investment from a film star

Bert Reynolds really struggled after his film star days. He decided to put $15 million to the restaurant chain PoFolks. He started this restaurant in Texas, Florida and California. It perished off, as would be anticipated, and he lost everything in the divorce with Loni Anderson. He ended up going bankrupt in 1996, which did not hurt too badly considering he was able to keep all property he owned that was not already claimed by Anderson such as a $2.5 million mansion. This was despite the belief that he really owed $10 million at the time.

Debbie Reynolds

Classic Hollywood film star and Las Vegas fixture Debbie Reynolds bought a Vegas casino in 1991. She christened it the Debbie Reynolds Hotel & Casino but neglected to anticipate just how much trouble the hotel would have maintaining business because it was located off the strip. A 1997 bankruptcy and sale of the hotel to the World Wrestling Federation in 1998 for $10 million left Reynolds broke and heartbroken. She would experience such grief again last year when her memorabilia museum also went bankrupt, forcing her to sell off the trappings of her film career.




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