Word: jacksonism
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...Little else about his finances was as clever. Blessed with the regular rewards from the Beatles' music and his own, Jackson started to spend. He paid $17 million in 1988 for the 2,800-acre (roughly 1,000 hectares) ranch in California that would become Neverland. Maintaining the theme park - complete with zoo, movie theater and fairground - swallowed up about $5 million annually. As Jackson gradually retreated from work, the additional millions eaten up by plane charters, antiques, lavish gifts and legal disputes - a child-molestation case in the early 1990s cost Jackson around $20 million to settle - left...
...Things would get worse. With sponsors turned off by Jackson's private life - Pepsi and sneaker brand LA Gear, for instance, had backed him - he further lost control of his finances. Duff investments and a divorce settlement with Lisa Marie Presley helped push Jackson to increasingly use his earnings from music as collateral for loans, first from Bank of America (BoA), before Fortress Investment Group, a specialist in distressed debt, took the loans off BoA's hands. By the mid-2000s, Jackson was believed to be $270 million in debt. (See Thriller's entry on the All-TIME 100 Albums...
...With annual income from the sale of his and his catalog's music at around $19 million, according to the Wall Street Journal, Jackson was still stretched. When the singer defaulted on a loan in March last year, pushing Neverland into foreclosure, private-equity firm Colony Capital stepped in to bail him out. The 50 concerts planned for London later this year could have netted Jackson as much as $100 million, with a possible world tour to follow generating five times that amount. To Jackson's debtors, if not to the singer himself, that sure would have added...
...pictures of Michael Jackson's famous friends at LIFE.com...
...special report on Michael Jackson's life and death...