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Greek Rich List News
P. Diddy tops Forbes rappers rich list
P. Diddy has been declared the richest man in rap by Forbes for the second year running, with an estimated personal net worth of around £344m – up £47m from last year.
Jay-Z was placed second on the list of richest rappers with an estimated net worth of £287m, while Dr Dre took third spot with £198m.
Diddy’s wealth is partly due to his business ventures – which include Ciroc Vodka, Sean John and Enyce clothing, Blue Flame marketing and Bad Boy Records, MTV reports.
Most recently the face of Diageo-backed Ciroc vodka: he reportedly receives double-digit millions annually as a share of profits.
Jay-Z also has a range of lucrative financial interests, including his recent Watch the Throne tour with Kanye West, a deal with Live Nation, advertising agency Translation, and a stake in the New Jersey Nets basketball team.
Steve Stoute, the advertising executive who founded and co-owns Translation with Jay-Z told Forbes: “Who’s going to be hip-hop’s first billionaire is still to be determined, but clearly Jay and Puffy are far and away positioned to surpass that.”
Dre has retained the third spot he took last year and upped his wealth with the sale of his Beats Electronics company to mobile phone giant HTC.
American rapper, Birdman, clocks in at No. 4 with a fortune of $125 million. He co-founded Cash Money Records with brother Ronald “Slim” Williams two decades ago and the label’s value is increasing with the success of rappers Drake, Nicki Minaj and Lil Wayne.
Rounding off the Forbes top Five is Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson with a reported personal wealth of $110 million. The Queens-born rapper earned $100 million from the sale of his Vitaminwater stake in 2007 — and tens of millions more from touring, record sales and clothing.
Source: Music Week
Greek Billionaire, 85, Wants US Students to Care About Deficits
At 85, billionaire Peter G. Peterson is old enough to be the father of ex-President Bill Clinton. Some of today’s college students could be his great-grandchildren. Peterson says he’ll be dead long before the economic chickens come home to roost for people currently in college.
But that hasn’t stopped him from reaching across party lines and generations to team up with Clinton on a project to inspire young people to care about “America’s long-term fiscal and economic challenges.”
Last month, Peterson, Clinton, and Net Impact Chief Executive Officer Liz Maw announced a contest, starting this fall, in which teams from 12 colleges will create campaigns to raise awareness and inspire action. The winning team, which presumably will be adept at social media, teach-ins, and other methods, will be announced at next year’s Clinton Global Initiative University meeting.
The contest is called Up to Us, with the “Us” referring to people a little more than six decades younger than Peterson. Known as “Pete,” Peterson is the son of poor Greek immigrants and was President Richard Nixon’s Commerce Secretary. Later he made a killing as co-founder of Blackstone Group, the big private equity firm that went public in 2007.
I interviewed Peterson last week in the midtown Manhattan offices of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, which is sponsoring Up to Us. He endowed the foundation with a billion dollars. Peterson was in an upbeat mood despite the daunting challenge of getting the U.S. on a path to fiscal soundness.
He told a joke about a professor who asked his students which is a worse problem in their generation, ignorance or apathy. From the back row someone yelled, “I don’t know and I don’t care.”
Getting young people to know and to care is the challenge of Up to Us.
Peterson has been banging this drum for so long—since 1981, to be precise—that he gets ribbed about becoming an old crank. In one story, terrorists take over a plane and announce they’re going to kill him and one other captive, giving each of them a dying wish. Peterson says his dying wish is to lecture the passengers about entitlements. The other captive says, “Shoot me first.”
Peterson, though a Republican, faults today’s GOP leadership for being unwilling to raise taxes as part of a solution to budget deficits. He’s also tougher on the Pentagon than most Republicans. The Department of Defense says it needs to be ready to fight two land wars, he notes. “When you ask where are those two land wars, you don’t get a good answer.”
But Peterson doesn’t let Democrats off the hook, either. He thinks they’re too soft on spending cuts. And he favors more aggressive means-testing of benefits such as Medicare and Social Security—phasing the programs out for upper-income recipients. Many Democrats fear that doing so would undermine the broad support those programs have now.
Why won’t Peterson let it rest and enjoy his retirement? “It’s very personal for me,” he says. “I lived the American Dream. My parents had a third-grade education. They came to this country from Greece at age 17, not a word of English. My father washed dishes in a caboose, 115 degrees. … They started a restaurant that was open 24 hours every day. It didn’t close for 25 years. When they cut back the hours they had to have a key made for the front door.”
Peterson doesn’t quite say so, but it’s clear that Up to Us is partly about waking up a generation that takes its prosperity for granted. His message to today’s college students? “It’s your future we’re talking about, not mine.”
Source: Bloomburg, By Peter Coy – Bloomberg Businessweek’s economics editor. Photo: Peter G. Peterson Foundation
You can read more about Peter G. Peterson and how he made his wealth in Greek Rich List magazine.
Wealthy UK Models, Sunday Times Rich List
When it comes to staggeringly wealthy models, Brazil’s got Gisele and Adriana. The U.S. has Kathy Ireland (yep, the former model has a $2 billion retail empire). But England boasts Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Lily Cole and even Natalia Vodianova (they’ve claimed the Russian model as their own).
England’s The Sunday Times revealed these names and more as it prepares to publish its annual Rich List 2012, in which the names of the 1,000 richest people in Britain and the 250 wealthiest in Ireland find their way to the general public. Among those 1,250 names, sixty are 30 years old or younger.
So who in fashion made the cut? The Sunday Times carves out a “Models” category, although many on the list are celebrity spokesmodels like Emma Watson and Keira Knightley. Among the real fashion pros, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley earns a first-time spot with £5 million while model/actress Lily Cole ranks with £8 million. The standout fashion name is Natalia Vodianova, who was born in Russia but now resides in the UK with her £16 million.
Missing from the “Models” list, of course, is Britain’s richest fashion couple: the Beckhams. Last year the pair ranked as England’s wealthiest celebrity couple with a combined worth of £180 million, mirroring America’s wealthiest celebrity couple, also a football-fashion pairing: Gisele Bundchen and Tom Brady.
The Times noted back in 2011 that the Beckhams’ continued success would push their then-£180 million value closer to £200 million in the 2012 Sunday Times Rich List.
In conclusion, marrying a footballer and starting your own line is apparently way more lucrative than posing for covers, runways and fragrance campaigns. Rosie, Natalia and Lily, take note.
The Sunday Times Rich List 2012 will published in full on Sunday, April 29.
Greek Rich List 2013/14 will be published in the Spring of 2013.
Source: Huffington Post
