Print Archive
Forbes •
November 7, 1994 -
“Three men and a boy”
A quarter-century ago, South Africa’s Harry Oppenheimer chanced upon a teenager at a dinner party. Today, that young man is building the Oppenheimers’ Minorco into one of the world’s
mineral mining giants.Henry (Hank) Slack recalls his first meeting with South Africa’s mining tycoon, Harry
Oppenheimer: “After we had eaten dinner, the women were shooed out, as was the custom. We sat
around the table smoking cigars and drinking port, talking about politics, business. Just four men,
solving the world’s problems.” Slack pauses for a moment and adds: “Well, three men and a boy.” Forbes: 3 Men And A Boy
Forbes •
April 24, 1995 -
Blue chips in your own backyard
McAlester, Okla. is best known for its Labor Day prison rodeo, where prisoners try to snatch
a leather pouch containing a $100 bill from between the horns of a bull. The rest of the year,
however, McAlester (pop. 19,003) seems every bit the sleepy little cattle town, where life moves
so slowly that the UPS man leaves his truck parked in the middle of Choctaw Avenue for an
hour every day as he makes pickups and deliveries at local shops and offices. Appearances are
deceptive. Ninety miles due south of Tulsa and a world away from Wall Street, McAlester is part
of one of the most vibrant capital markets in America. Forbes: Blue Chips In Your Own Backyard
Forbes •
March 27, 1995 -
Full circle
In the summer of 1990, Donald Moffitt was 58 and in early retirement. While cruising his 44-foot
sloop White Bear around Britis Columbia’s Gulf Islands, he received a distress call on the boat’s
radiophone. It was his former boss, Consolidated Freightways, Inc.’s chairman, Raymond O’Brien.
Would Moffitt please come home? O’Brien begged.
Moffit smiled. His career was suddenly coming full circle. He had spent 33 years at Consolidated,
the last 10 as the company’s top financial officer. But in 1988, O’Brien promoted Moffitt’s rival,
Lary Scott, to Consolidated’s number one spot. Passed over, Moffitt quit. After spending most of
the next 2 years rebuilding Circle Express, a troubled regional trucker, he retired to his sailboat.
And now, O’Brien wanted him back. Forbes: Ful Circle
Forbes •
November 20, 1995 -
I detest incompetence
Wall Street is changing, and Lazard Freres is changing with it. Meet its abrasive heir presumptive
Edouard Stern, who didn’t hesitate to turn on his own father. Perhaps the first clear sign that Edouard Stern was not just another pleasant and untroubled heir
to a Swiss banking fortune was the day, not long after his 22nd birthday, that he convinced his two
uncles he could run the family bank better than his own father. Mr. Nice Guy Edouard Stern is not.
Nor does he try to be. Now age 41 and heir presumptive to the Lazard Freres investment throne,
Stern has not mellowed. Forbes: I Detest Incompetence
Forbes •
November 21, 1994 -
Take a bow, Lee Iacocca
This year’s edition of the Almanac for Farmers and City Folk makes chilly reading for East Coast
residents. The venerable guide to nature’s vagaries is forecasting a truly forbidding winter—35
snowstorms between November and March, up from 29 in 1993. Which makes marketers of four-
wheel- and front-wheel-drive vehicles very happy. Blanketing the Northeast with a blizzard of ads,
car dealers are gleefully blaring out the Almanac’s grim prediction. “Farmer’s Almanac predicts a
fierce winter! Be prepared! Buy Jeep 4X4s now!” reads one typical New York City newspaper ad. I
that scary enough to sell a $53,000 Range Rover? You bet. Sales of these four-wheel-drive vehicles
are up an impressive 131%, to 7,531, in the first nine months of this year. Forbes: Take A Bow Lee Iacocca
Forbes •
November 7, 1994 -
Thou better not steal
Growing up on a Maryland dairy farm, Louis Brown Jr. couldn’t wait to escape. The son and
grandson of dairy farmers, Brown remembers being 10 on a hot summer day and dreaming
wistfully about an air-conditioned Westinghouse Electric building not far away. “I was standing on
our farm looking over at that building full of engineers,” Brown recalls, “and I knew I wanted to
be in there.” Brown attended Johns Hopkins University on a scholarship and earned an engineering
degree in 1966. He put in brief stints at Armco Steel and Hewlett-Packard but could not suppress
the entrepreneurial itch. “I knew right out of college that three geeks in a basement with a silicon
chip could create some very dangerous products,” says Brown with a rapid-fire southern twang. “I
don’t mind being a geek. It’s easier than farming.” Forbes: Thou Better Not Steal
Forbes •
November 6, 1995 -
Ulcers? Try hot pepper
In the mid-1960s Eugene Hughes, a devout Mormon who taught fourth grade, developed a stomach
ulcer. “I swigged on that pink chalky stuff almost every day,” says Hughes, a Utah native who’s
now 65. No help. One day a neighbor suggested capsicum, a spicy red pepper powder. Treat an
ulcer with pepper? Hughes was ready to try anything. “I got myself up to swallowing a heaping
tablespoon of the [capsicum] stuff everyday,” he recalls. Turning to his wife sitting quietly next to
him, he adds: “It was Kristine’s idea to put the pepper in capsules for me because it tasted so bad.”
Hughes says the ulcer improved, and the Hugheses decided to market their pepper capsules. Forbes: Ulcers Try Hot Pepper
George •
August 2000 -
Stiletto Feminists: Heel to No One
Coyote Ugly is about a group of sexy gals who run a bar—and rule the guys who go there. Meet
the “Stiletto Feminists”—sexually empowered women who strut their stuff and are proud of it.
They personify today’s power woman and—guess what?—they’re everywhere. George
Forbes Informer •
January 1, 1996 -
Leave it to Jane
Ted Turner was not amused. At a late November cable TV bash in Anaheim, Calif., wanna-be
movie magnate Barry Diller reminded the audience that Turner wouldn’t get the top job if the Time Warner/Turner Broadcasting deal went through. Apparently stung, Turner responded: “Well, [vice
chairman’s] not much of a title, but I’ve got horses. I’ve got another life I can go to if I have to.”
He smiles fondly at his wife Jane…
Heavy water
Forty acres, riv view, fire-sale price. What was once going to be Germany’s first plutonium-fired
nuclear power plant ma become an amusement park on the Rhine river near the Dutch border.
Following the Chernobyl disaster in 1986, the German government scrapped the unfinished plant,
which had been under construction since 1973…Informer-1-1-96
Forbes Informer •
February 12, 1996
-
Good Samaritan wins big
This may well be the public relations gesture of the year: During the 1995 Christmas holidays,
Donald Trump and Marla Maples find themselves marooned in their stretch limo with a flat tire
on a busy stretch of New Jersey highway. Finally, a passing motorist spots the limo in distress and
offers to help the chauffeur change the tire. Before the re-tired limo rolls off, the darkened window
rolls down and an effusive Trump asks what he and his wife can do to repay the favor. Just send
my wife a big bouquet of flowers, says the guy, handing Trump a card with his wife’s name and
their address. Two weeks later a gargantuan bouquet of orchids arrives with a card reading: “We
paid off your home mortgage, Marla and Donald.” Informer-2-12-96
Forbes Informer •
February 26, 1996 -
The royal treatment
Former President Gerald Ford descended the stairs from the lobby of Manhattan’s Waldorf-Astoria
Hotel recently to find reporters and photographers crowded at the entrance below. He waved and
smiled. No questions were asked, no cameras clicked. Ford barely escaped being bowled over as
the news-hounds hurried to surround the Duchess of York, who was just behind him. Looking hurt,
Ford stepped quietly into his waiting limo and sped off…
Asset stripping
In the 1970s, Playboy Inc. caught so much flak over its risqué stock certificates that it toned
them down. The lesson is lost on Million Dollar Saloon, Inc. The certificates from a recent public
offering for the swanky Dallas strip joint feature photographs of club dancers flanking a languid
ecdysiast from the 1920s. Dealers in collectible stock certificates are snapping them up…Informer-2-26-96
Forbes Informer •
March 11, 1996 -
Eagle or vulture?
Last April, owner Dean Singleton Shuttered the Houston Post, the town’s number two paper,
leaving the field to Hearst’s Houston Chronicle. It’s bad PR to gloat over a defeated rival, but the
Hearst people haven’t hidden their feeling of triumph…Last month news came out that a massive
painting had gone up on the wall in Chronicle publisher Richard Johnson’s conference room. It
depicts a fierce bald eagle, Hearst’s corporate symbol, about to tear apart a hapless hooded falcon.
Get it? Hint The Chronicle’s code name for its long-term strategy to put the Post out of business
was Operation Falcon…
Second opinion - The Securities & Exchange Commission is looking into complaints that Goldman, Sachs & Co.
made math errors in a valuation it drew up for Wallace Computer Services last October. The
business-forms maker used the Goldman analysis to reject a takeover bid from Moore Corp.
Shareholders were misled, according to New York arbitrage firm Wyser-Pratte, because Goldman
mistakenly inflated Wallace’s value b as much as 18%...
Do as I say, not…
As is well known, John O’Quinn, of breast implant litigation fame, was almost kicked off the bar
in 1989 for using “accident runners” to solicit clients after plane crashes. Now that he’s gotten rich,
O’Quinn craves respectability. So he quietly donated a pile of his silicone-padded loot to get his
name on the University of Houston’s law library…Informer-3-11-96
Forbes Informer •
March 25, 1996 -
All the news that pas we print -
When corruption has seeped into every corner of society, fighting it gets very complicated.
Consider the situation right now in the Mexican press. “President Zedillo has ordered all his
ministers to stop paying journalists for favorable coverage,” a highly placed south-of-the-border
source tells Informer. “The problem is,” the source says, “this loss of revenue may bankrupt some
of the local newspapers.”
Yale bites the bullet -
Twenty years back, the trustees of ale University decided they needed a business school that could
compete in prestige with Harvard’s and Stanford’s M.B.A. factories. But they needed an angle.
Thus was born the Yale School of Management that would turn out not mone-grubbers but people
who would run government and do-good outfits efficiently. Its product: a master’s degree in public
and private management…
Gambling on gams - After signing on as spokeswoman for L’Eggs hosiery, actress Jamie Lee Curtis got her legs insured
for $1 million b Lloyd’s of London. Before inking the deal, a Lloyd’s rep visited the set where
Curtis was filming her first L’Eggs commercial. Yep, he decided. Definitely worth insuring. Informer-3-25-96
Forbes Informer •
April 8, 1996 -
Dadscape
Silicon Graphics’ whiz kid James (Jim) Clark is worth around $800 million since Silicon’s IPO
and the big runup in Netscape, which he now heads. His father, Charles Clark, 78, is a ward of
Harris County, Tex., living in a low-rent nursing home and collecting under $500 a month in Social
Security. But Jim Clark won’t give his dad a dime…
You feel my pain -
Retired hedge funder Michael Steinhardt cultivates a public service image, dabbling in
environmentalism and investing some $4 million to help the Jewish weekly the Forward become
a daily newspaper. His private reputation, however, is a bit different. To people who know him,
Steinhardt’s considered a real skinflint…
They don’t waste much in Ulan Bator, capital of Mongolia -
Fashion is rarely functional, but Mongolia may have squared the circle. A local furrier, Moengon
Erdene Co., which caters to foreigners, has added dog fur to its inventory of marmot, fox, sable and
lamb. The coats are made from the fur of strays that infest the streets…Informer-4-8-96
Forbes Informer • April 22, 1996 -
If you got it, flaunt it -
That house in Gstaad with the Learjet perched on the private tarmac in the backyard is no longer
the ultimate status symbol. Now it’s: How many bodyguards do you have? Recently seen in Sun
Valley’s ultraswank BBC Café: Donald nad Marla Trump with their lone bodyguard, watching
Madonna march past flanked b two musclemen. But coffeehouse honors went to Ronald Perelman,
who arrived with four. A rather important but bodyguard-deprived bank chairman was heard to
say while observing the scene: “So this is the new way of saying, ‘Hey, I’m important. Look at
me.’”…
In Rubin we trust -
The Russians have complete trust in the full faith and credit of the U.S. Treasury—at least in
comparison with their own wallpaper. This is good for the battered greenback, and is the equivalent
for the U.S. government of borrowing money at 0%. But lately the RUssion mafia has gotten very
good at counterfeiting C-notes…
Poor Warren’s almanac -
Critical Wall Streeters know that companies are often put on the market or taken public when
the owners know they have peaked. Warren Buffett puts a new twist on it in his annual report
letter sent to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders last month. Buffett illustrates his point with an
anecdote: A man says to a veterinarian, “Can you help me? Sometimes my horse walks just fine,
and sometimes he limps.” Replies the vet: “No problem. When he’s walking fine, sell him.”… Informer-4-22-96
Forbes •
May 6, 1996 -
Forbes Informer
Double standard?
Whatever may have happened there in the past, the White House is a temple of purit these days.
Smoking is strictly verboten. So, apparently, is extramarital sex…
Making excuses -
Remember Donna Rice, the tootsie whose affair with the then-Senator Gary Hart sank Hart’s presidential campaign in 1987? Rice later parlayed her brief notoriety into a marginal endorsement
career for products like No Excuses blue jeans. Her earlier career had included some bare-breasted
posing. What’s she doing now?...
Parker’s palate -
Robert Parker makes a very good living running expensive vino over his exquisitely sensitive
tastebuds and telling the rest of the world whether it’s worth buying. So Parker’s request to insure
those tastebuds for $1 million at Lloyd’s of London isn’t entirely frivolous…Informer-5-6-96
Forbes •
May 20, 1996 -
Forbes Informer
Eye on the money -
In the 1983 James Bond flick Never Say Never Again, a cahracter’s identity is established b a
machine that recognizes the pattern of his iris. The technology didn’t exist then, but it does now,
and it’s coming to ATMs in Japan by the end of the year…
Guerrilla chic -
Guess who’s rumored to be the next Hollywood hero. None other than “Subcommandante
Marcos,” the self-dramatizing leader of the Zapatista rebels…
Tilting at windmills -
After three decades of vacillating about a film adaptation of the Cervantes masterpiece Don
Quixote, Tinseltown bigwigs have finally decided to make it—as a comedy. Informer-5-20-96
Forbes •
June 3, 1996 -
Forbes Informer
Greensmail -
Can a golf course hole be intellectual property? In a case dubbed “Tour 18,” a group is being sued
for developing a golf course in Humble, Tex. that aims to replicate famous golf holes at Pebble
Beach, Pinehurst and Harbour Town golf courses. The plaintiffs claim the imitation constitutes infringement of their proprietary rights, unfair competition and misappropriation of the goodwill
that they have invested vast sums of money to develop…
Home economics -
Director Martin Scorsese, known for his genius filmmaking, is now out with his most expensive
picture ever, Casino, whose budget was a reported $50 million. But Scorsese has a secret weapon
for keeping his expenses down on the set: his mom, Catherine…
Just an average guy -
Seattle’s Lakeside Upper School counts Forbes Four Hundred-topper Bill Gates among its alumni.
Rumor has it a fundraiser for the high school put the bite on Gates, who asked: “how much is
everyone else giving?”…Informer-6-3-96
Forbes •
June 17, 1996 -
Forbes Informer
Tuna with Tipper -
To raise cash for its election war chest, the Democratic National Committee is hawking private
dinners with President Clinton, tag-along spots on foreign trade missions and other elbow-rubbing
ops with senior officials. For these up-close encounters, donors must be willing to cough up
$100,000 or more…
A sinking ship? -
Our spies at Lazard Freres & Co., the New York investment bank, tell us that 15 bankers—
partners, associations and VPs—have left since January. Last out the door: international mergers
and acquisitions chief Robert Agostinelli, and fellow partner Steven Langman…
Ted prioritizes-
Some 400 folks paid $125 a plate to hear Ted Turner’s keynote speech at the Center for
Entrepreneurship’s annual fundraising banquet in Albuquerque, N.M. last month. Turner’s talk
lasted all of two minutes—60 bucks a minute for the attendees…Informer-6-17-96
Forbes •
July 1, 1996 -
Forbes Informer
Secret slush funds?
The celebrated Andy Warhol estate lawyer, Edward Hayes, may be bumping up the lawyer-sleaze index a few notches. Last April the court decided Hayes deserved $7.2 million for settling the
pop artist’s estate. This was 2% of the total value of Warhol’s art, which was his prearranged fee.
Lawyers for the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts think otherwise…
Hewlett does 1-900 -
The people at Hewlett-Packard have been getting a ton of unwanted phone calls recently—most
with heavy breathing. All this because a Nigerian-born exotic dancer who struts her stuff on a late-
night pornography channel is hawking a 1-900number for customers who want to speak to her
personally. Coincidentally, the customer-service geeks at HP can e reached on the same number,
but it’s 1-800, not 1-900…
Michael versus Michael-
The honeymoon didn’t last long. Our Hollywood spies tell us the two Walt Disney Co. big-wigs,
Michael Eisner and Michael Ovitz, are feuding….Informer-7-1-96
Forbes •
July 15, 1996 -
Forbes Informer
Setback for Bill Clinton’s campaign chest -
It looks like a bunch of plaintiff attorneys wanting to cash in quick on silicone breast implant
cases have been left holding the bag. In April 1994, the litigators hammered out a $4.25 billion
global settlement with the silicone breast implant manufacturers. But the lawyers, who are heavy
contributors to Clinton’s campaign, collapsed the deal because the thought they could get more
bang for their buck if they sued the manufacturers individually. Here is what FORBES was told…
Entitled -
Boris Becker has won Wimbledon three times. Now he reportedly wants to buy the title: Lord of
Wimbledon…
Oops! Wrong name -
ERASER, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s latest budget-buster movie, cost nearly $90 million to make,
but at least the producers did manage to sidestep a potentially expensive lawsuit…Informer-7-13-96
Forbes •
July 29, 1996 -
Forbes Informer
For residents only -
A storm is brewing in one of the tony East Coast summer spots. Buck Hill Falls, a resort
community just south of the Poconos, has been frequented by such establishment types as James
Ottaway of the newspaper chain, Edwin Gee, who ran International Paper and now is chairman of
Oncogene, and William Laporte, former chairman of American Home Products. The residents like
things just he way they are…
A tougher client -
Jo-Ellan Demitrius boats she gets up to $500,000 a case to help pick sympathetic juries, and if the
O.J. Simpson jury is any guide, she’s worth it…Informer-7-29-96
Forbes •
September 9, 1996 -
Forbes Informer
Commuters rushing to catch the 6:28 out of Greenwich, Lake Forest, Tiburon or Grosse Pointe
would envy Charles Pratt, John D. Rockefeller’s partner in the old Standard Oil Trust. Legend
holds that every morning, around the turn of the century, Pratt would board a 55-foot motor launch
with a crew of five and set out for Wall Street from the family’s palatial compound in Glen Cove,
on New York’s Long Island. The commuting spirit of Charles Pratt still lives. A handful of well-
heeled business people combine fat pocketbooks, modern transportation and imagination to free
themselves from the physical and emotional insult of rush-hour commuting.
A swim in the lake before dinner -
Robert Ratliffe is the head of public relations for the McCaw telecommunications dynasty. At
7 every morning Ratliffe jumps into a 26-foot, 1969 Lyman Lapstrake runabout and buzzes 20
minutes across Lake Washington from Seattle to his office in Kirkland, Wash. Eleven hours later
he stops on his way home to have a drink and a dip in the lake…
Avoiding the traffic -
Richard Jaycobs, chief of business development at Computer Trading Corp., a $160 million hedge
fund, prefers Nantucket. Almost every day between April and October he flies his single-engine
Mooney airplane either to New Jersey’s Teterboro airport or back to the fashionable island off the
Massachusetts coast. One big problem in the North Atlantic: fog. Informer-9-9-96
Forbes • September 23, 1996 -
Forbes Informer
Messy divorces among prominent people keep gossip columnists in material, and who doesn’t
get a little satisfaction out of the vicissitudes of the rich and powerful? However, these days the
ramifications often spill over to the financial pages—what with community property laws. Moral:
It’s getting harder to keep your private life and your business life separate. Herewith, Informer
offers to cautionary tales:
Trip trips…
The ever flamboyant Trip Hawkins founded Electronic Arts, the electronic software publisher. He
went on to start the 3DO Company—a venture he thought up to design and manufacture a hot new
videogame that would leapfrog competitors Nintendo and Sega. Very much his helpmate on this
colorful journey was his elegant auburn-haired wife, Diana, a Harvard Ph.D…
Catherine’s casualty-
In 1983 Thomas Casey came on as chief executive officer of Audre Recognition Systems, a
San Diego-based image-scanning software startup. Two years later his wife, Catherine, filed for
divorce. In the settlement she was offered both cash and stock in the public company. The stock
not being worth much, she chose to go with a cash-heavy settlement. But eight years later her
ex-husband’s company was thriving—its sales almost tripling between 1992 and 1993, to $2.38
million, and its future bright. Ctherine Casey sued again, naming Audre Recognition Systems as
codefendent…Informer-9-23-96
Marie Claire •
August, 2000 -
Bathing suits, ballgowns & bickering:
Behind the scenes at the Miss Universe pageant
They may seem all sweetness and light, but what becomes of beauty queens when the cameras
aren’t rolling? Kate Bohner gets the real dirt on the most beautiful women in the world.
Imagine my surprise when I suddenly find myself squatting between sequined gowns and flesh-
colored undergarments, somewhere deep in the bowels of the Miami Convention Center. After all,
I’m a journalist, not a terrorist. And yet here I am, setting my sights on Miss Puerto Rico—known
around town to be a serious contender for Miss Universe…Marie-Claire
The New York Times •
Wednesday, June 13, 2001 -
It’s Lights, Camera, Economic Analysis! By Patrick McGeehan -
From where Kate Bohner was standing, E*Trade Group did not appear to have reinvented
electronic communications. Ms. Bohner, a former reporter for the financial cable channel CNBC,
was poised on a large black box in front of a television camera in the lobby of “E*Trade On
Air,” an hourlong program that can be heard live weekday mornings on E*Trade’s Web site. The
makeshift setup is the first stage of a “digital financial media strategy” envisioned by Ms. Bohner’s
boss, Christos M. Cotsakos. Mr. Cotsakos, the chairman and chief executive of E*Trade Group,
the online brokerage and banking company, is no conformist. He insists on calling Ms. Bohner’s
workplace, a four-level storefront on Madison Avenue at 55th Street in Manhattan, a center rather
than a branch…New York Times
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