Word: northwester
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...rich, centimillionaire rich. He has a gated mansion in Beverly Hills, a beautiful lawyer wife, a California tan--and enough of a '60s sensibility to feel guilty about it all. After nearly three decades of making money with the Marriott Corp., the Walt Disney Co., the Bass brothers and Northwest Airlines, Checchi says it's time to give something back. At age 49, he's running for office for the first time in his life. He wants to be California's first Democratic Governor since Jerry Brown held the job back...
...process. His work with Disney helped him befriend Hollywood heavyweights like Michael Eisner and Michael Ovitz, and in 1994 he joined the Beverly Hills crowd by buying the old estate of actor Sidney Poitier. In 1989 he helped finance a $3.65 billion leveraged buyout of Minnesota-based Northwest Airlines, investing about $12 million of his own money. Today much of his fortune is based on the 11.4 million shares he holds in the company...
...Checchi knows, his years as co-chairman of Northwest are the ones his critics are most likely to use against him. When asked about his piloting of the airline, he gets a scowl on his face and pulls out two yellow, legal-size pages of scrunched-up notes to defend his record there from 1989 to 1993. Critics charge that he took the once profitable carrier, burdened by debt from the LBO, to the brink of bankruptcy. Checchi used his charisma to extract some $800 million in union concessions and an additional $837 million in state and local bonds, subsidies...
...version, Checchi was the "white knight" who kept the company from being dismantled by asset strippers or from going down the tubes like Eastern Air Lines. He also gave Northwest employees stock that has tripled in value. "Look," he says, "we took one of the worst airlines in America and made it one of the most profitable." But Paul Omodt, spokesman for the Air Line Pilots Association for Northwest, says the LBO was "disastrous" for the employees, who ended up bailing out the company in return for stock and three directors' seats. As for the state's involvement, critics like...
...whisk him away to the U.S. Since he was ailing and China was granting him a "medical parole," one of his first stops after leaving prison needed to be a hospital. And since the only nonstop route from Beijing to the U.S. on an American carrier was a Northwest Airlines flight to Detroit, Henry Ford was chosen to receive the celebrated patient. There was only one catch. "It's possible," warned Dr. Mariano, "that no one will be paying for this...