Word: junked
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...snowballed down Wall Street in the past two decades--and by the way, don't expect a moral to this tale. In the 1980s Gillett was busy building a billion-dollar empire based on the odd combination of meatpacking and television stations, much of it financed by the junk bonds of Drexel Burnham Lambert, led by the now infamous Michael Milken. Drexel pumped out high-risk securities the way snowmaking machines create instant winter. Gillett, a Wisconsin boy, loved to ski, and he loved to ski at Vail, a powdery paradise in the Colorado Rockies. So he bought the joint...
...whole mess came crashing down in 1991, when Gillett, having overpaid for yet another television station, found himself looking at interest rates for his junk bonds that had spiked above 17%. "When the notes came due, we were dead," he says...
Fast-forward to 1997, when the ski industry, not to mention the junk-bond industry, has come full circle. Gillett the Bankrupt has had "little" difficulty raising $162.5 million in investment capital, and he is assembling another empire, this one built around medium-size properties near big cities to capture the day trippers and weekenders who account for nearly half the ski business. He bought back his old meatpacking operation in 1994 and added adornments such as a barge business in the Pacific Northwest and a group of golf courses in Montana. Have the bankers lost their marbles again...
Gillett personally relishes skiing "steep and deep," which is not a bad metaphor for his investment style. Like his earlier Vail venture, Gillett II rests on a mountain of junk securities, although these cost a mere 12.5% interest, well below the nosebleed rate for his last go-round. And this time he has two big partners: the John Hancock Mutual Life Insurance Co., which owns 50% of the ski operations, and the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, which has 10%. Says Gillett, who has a hard time containing his optimism: "The demographics are with us. Skiing is at the same...
Spam--unsolicited junk E-mail--is perhaps the most irritating feature of online life. Its purveyors use powerful software to "harvest" screen names and then ship out bulk electronic mail bearing sales pitches or get-rich-quick schemes. But erotic spam is more than just irritating. It is offensive to many, and if there are young kids in the house, it can be downright scary. Children may not be that interested in getting rich quick, but they may be tempted to peek at an X-rated Website. And while that is reasonably easy to do in any case...