Word: investor
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...some of the most established and successful family firms, the heirs have switched from an active-management to a passive-investor role. Consider Liliane Bettencourt, 80, who manages her family's $11 billion stake in L'Oreal cosmetics--founded by her father in 1907--through a holding company. She and her daughter Francoise, 49, sit on the L'Oreal board, but no other family member works at the firm. When Freddie Heineken died last year, control of his brewing colossus passed to his daughter and sole heir, Charlene de Carvalho Heineken, 48. She lives in London with her banker husband...
Sweden's Wallenberg family is one of the most powerful in Europe. Through family foundations, it controls or holds substantial influence over about 40% of the entire capitalization of the Swedish stock exchange. (Even the exchange is part of a company that the Wallenbergs control.) Investor AB, the family's industrial holding company, dates from 1916. It faced an unprecedented attack two years ago, when Swiss financier Martin Ebner built up a 10% stake and called for Investor to be broken up in the name of improving shareholder value. Ebner, overstretched financially, has since had to sell or reduce many...
...investor role isn't always passive; sometimes it can be passive-aggressive, as the Quandt family has demonstrated. Herbert Quandt acquired a controlling stake in automaker BMW in 1959, when it was in dire straits. His heirs today own 47% of BMW's stock. The children of Quandt's third marriage, Stefan, 36, and Susanne, 40, sit on BMW's supervisory board. In 1999, angered by continuing losses at the automaker's Rover subsidiary in Britain, they ousted CEO Bernd Pischetsrieder in a boardroom coup. In Hamburg, the fate of Beiersdorf (Nivea skin cream) has been uncertain for months because...
People are listening to the Sage of Omaha again. The man whom many consider to be the greatest investor of all time--Buffett once raised $210,000 at a charity auction for his 20-year-old wallet, with a stock tip inside--fell into disfavor in the late '90s. He was criticized for avoiding tech shares when they were soaring, and for clinging to big positions in stocks like Coke and Gillette after they had peaked and were driving down the market value of his company, Berkshire Hathaway...
Somewhat lost on Buffett's new stage of influence is the plight of the typical investor, who just wants to learn a thing or two about the market. Yes, Buffett still says plenty about how to find value, and his archive of letters on the Net amounts to a timeless library on the issue. Investors can piggyback Buffett by investing in Berkshire--if, that is, they can muster the $61,700 it takes to buy a single "A" share. Even the "Baby Berks," or "B" shares, which carry reduced voting rights and grant no say on the company's charitable...