Sunday, June 29, 2014

The Women Problems of the Billionaires

These guys have serious problems controlling their women.

Of course, Donald Sterling has trouble with V.  Stivano.

Rupert Murdoch caught his ex-wife Wendi Deng shacking up with Tony Blair.

A George Soros ex-girlfriend is suing him.

And Sumner Redstone, the largest shareholder in CBS and Viacom is the latest with woman problems. NyPo reports:
Sumner Redstone’s live-in girlfriend, Sydney Holland, is a control freak...
.
Redstone, the majority owner of CBS and Viacom, is being dragged into a bitter court battle between Holland and his former protegee Heather Naylor.
Holland, 43, is suing Naylor, 33, for $1 million — claiming the star of the short-lived MTV show “The Electric Barbarellas” stole her laptop computer containing “private and confidential” photographs.
That usually means X-rated.
Naylor countersued, charging that Holland used her influence, as she took control of Redstone’s life, to get the show canceled.
Redstone is 91 and worth $6.2 billion.
edstone reportedly pushed MTV execs to air the show — about a girl group described as a cross between the Pussycat Dolls and the Spice Girls, but raunchier — and gave Naylor $157,000 worth of Viacom stock.
In motions filed Friday, Naylor’s pit bull lawyer Neville Johnson states, “Because Holland is a beneficiary under Redstone’s will, she did not like that Redstone was spending his time and his resources with a free thinker like Naylor.”
Court papers state that “Holland grew jealous of Naylor’s relationship with Redstone and made efforts to cut off all ties between Redstone and Naylor so that Holland could control Redstone for her own economic advantage.”
Holland allegedly had all the phone numbers changed so Naylor couldn’t reach Redstone — and all of Naylor’s contacts removed from Redstone’s database so that he couldn’t reach her, a source familiar with the case told me.
These boys need to take some lessons from J. Paul Getty, once the world's richest man, who kept a dozen, or so, women floating around him. One for his cultural tastes, one for his intellectual pursuits etc.. In his will he left them only on average about $500,000 each. From PEOPLE:
 After his death last month at the age of 83, it was disclosed that a dozen women he had loved, was charmed by or did business with would share in his multimillion-dollar estate...The largest personal bequest—5,000 shares of Getty oil stock valued at $826,500 and $1,167 a month for life—went to Penelope Ann Kitson, 53, an English interior decorator and mother of three. Recently divorced from her third husband, industrialist Patrick De Laszlo, tall, elegant Penelope Kitson was constantly at Getty's side during his final weeks...

Penelope's closest rival, in terms of inheritance, is Mary Teissier, 50, a Russian-born French interior decorator and art expert. She was willed 2,500 shares valued at $413,250 plus $750 a month for life. "The last few years," she says of Getty, "were very close, very sweet and very generous. Don't try to make a romance out of that. He was as old as my father!" ...

Getty left 1,000 shares worth $165,000 to widowed Lady Ursula d'Abo, 59, a celebrated prewar society beauty he had known 22 years. She shared his interest in gardening and served as a sometime hostess at Getty's parties where guests ranged from French esthetes to Oklahoma wildcatters.

Rosabella Burch, 42, a Nicaraguan widow who was one of Getty's companions for the last 15 years of his life, received $82,625 in stock....

Oddly enough, only one of Getty's five ex-wives was mentioned in his will: Louise Lynch Getty of Santa Monica, once a professional singer, who received $55,000 per year for life.

He bestowed lesser amounts on an astonishing variety of women about whom little is known: Countess Marianne von Alvensleben, 54, of Düsseldorf, West Germany; Karin Mannhardt (another German); Hildegard Kuhn, 69, of West Berlin; Gloria Bigelow of Los Angeles; Mary Maginnis of Malibu and Belene Clifford of West Covina.
Getty also claimed that Aristotle Onassis knew how to deal with difficult women. According to Getty, Ted Kennedy was severely outmatched by Onassis when he met with Onassis to hammer out the financial arrangements for Jackie's marriage to him.

Getty reported that, among other things, in his will Onasis left half of his yacht to Jackie and the other half to his daughter. The yacht required a massive staff for upkeep. It was a tremendous financial drain that Jackie couldn't do anything about, other than pay the bills, because of her only half ownership. Getty claimed that Onassis knew exactly what a financial knot he was leaving Jackie in when he negotiated with Ted.

As best I can tell, it seems that as far as modern day tycoons, Warren Buffett is closest to handling women in the manner Getty did. He is married but seems to have a number of other women floating around his place---and he doesn't seem to have the women problems that Murdoch, Sterling et al., have come up against.

-RW

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