PAGE 3: Berggruen Repictures L.A.

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He might still be nicknamed the “homeless billionaire,” but Nicolas Berggruen certainly has an eye for Los Angeles.

The 55-year-old founder of the Berggruen Institute, to be housed in the Brentwood hills near the Getty Center, has an Instagram feed filled with images of Los Angeles, along with photos of art and artists. The latest shot, posted right before Christmas, is a carefully composed image of the white Beverly Hilton Hotel framed by a blue pool and a deep blue L.A. sky.

“I look at Instagram as a window into the world,” said Berggruen, who has been using the platform for about a year. “I’m interested in things that relate to what I am personally interested in, politics and culture at a deep level. How to convey that through images is not always easy.”

Berggruen, whose Instagram images are shot on his phone, said he finds Los Angeles “visually stunning.” And while the shot of the Beverly Hilton is his most recent post, the picture itself is not so new.

“That picture was frankly taken a while ago,” he said. “But I felt it had a certain very L.A. feel – it’s urban but at the same time it’s not. It’s a strange combination, which is what makes L.A. L.A.”

Gores Doubles Down on Detroit

Tom Gores, chairman and chief executive of Beverly Hills’ Platinum Equity, might be one of the wealthiest people in Los Angeles, but his heart is still in his home state of Michigan.

The private equity titan grew up in Flint, about an hour north of Detroit, and still maintains business – and emotional – ties to the region. Owner of the Detroit Pistons basketball team, Gores is now making a play for a Major League Soccer team for the city. He has partnered with Dan Gilbert, owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers, to come up with a plan for a $1 billion mixed-use stadium project for the ailing Rust Belt city.

Gores couldn’t be reached for comment on the plan, but MLS Commissioner Don Garber told the Detroit Free Press that “Tom is really smart, really experienced in professional sports and would make a great (MLS) owner.”

The league plans four expansion teams and seven cities are competing for the right to call one home.

Gores’ contributions have not been limited to sports – through the Pistons and his family, he continued his relationship with Marine Toys for Tots Foundation in Detroit this holiday season.

The Gores family has been associated with the foundation since 2009 and has provided more than 30,000 children with upwards of 75,000 toys in that time.

Munger Houses Physicists

It’s not all that hard to lure people to Santa Barbara, but Charlie Munger, chairman of Daily Journal Corp. and vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, has made it a little easier to attract physicists.

Munger offered to donate $65 million for a residence at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics at UC Santa Barbara four years ago, and the facility he funded is set to open early next year.

“It’s the main visiting physics program in the whole damn world,” Munger, 92, recently told the Santa Barbara Independent. “It’s a huge feather in the cap of UC Santa Barbara.”

The gift of the physics dorm is part of a planned $200 million donation pledged by Munger to build more dorms at the school.

Another Saban Production

Haim Saban, one of the biggest backers of Hillary Clinton’s failed presidential run, might have devoted much of his extracurricular energy to the election, but that hasn’t stopped him from swinging deals.

Saban, 72, is a producer on the latest release in his Mighty Morphin Power Rangers franchise. The new film, due in March, is called “Power Rangers: Aftershocks” and features Elizabeth Banks, Bryan Cranston, and Bill Hader.

Saban and his team announced in late December that they had inked a deal with comic-book publisher Boom Studios to release a graphic novel based on the film a few days after the feature’s release.

Elon Musk’s Inside Track

Elon Musk, founder of Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) and Tesla Motors, a PayPal billionaire, and the mind behind the hyperloop transportation idea that has several companies competing to execute his vision, has also become an insider in the incoming Trump administration.

President-elect Donald Trump last month tapped Musk and Uber Chief Executive Travis Kalanick to sit on his Strategic and Policy Forum, an informal group that will meet “frequently” with Trump after he takes office. Musk is in many ways the most visible of L.A.’s billionaires, so it might not be surprising that he got such a plum position. But he might have had an inside track to the gig as far back as 2015. Trump outlined his stable of cars to The Washington Post in an article that year, a collection that included just two American-made models: a Cadillac Escalade and a Tesla.

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