Billionaire investor Kirk Kerkorian, once ranked as the richest man in Los Angeles, has died.
The 98-year-old former boxer was chief executive of private holding company Tracinda Corp., the controlling shareholder of MGM Resorts International. He had an estimated net worth of $6.5 billion, ranking No. 6 on the Business Journal’s 2015 list of Wealthiest Angelenos.
Kerkorian ranked No. 1on the list six times, a record topped only this year by Patrick Soon-Shiong, who was ranked first for the seventh time.
Born in Fresno, Kerkorian started working at age 9 as a paperboy and served as a pilot in World War II. It was an experience that led him to his first fortune, an air service that ferried gamblers to Las Vegas. From there he acquired an 80-acre parcel on the Strip, a speculative play that landed him in the casino business.
He bought a controlling stake in MGM Studios in 1969 and owned it for two decades before selling it to Ted Turner. He re-acquired the company in 1996, only to sell it to a group led by Sony in 2005.
Not all his speculative plays worked out so well. His two forays in the auto business met with failure. He made an unsuccessful attempt to take over Chrysler in 1996 and in 2006 acquired a 10 percent stake in GM, part of a plan to have it merge with Nissan and Renault. Though he ended up with a seat on the board, the merger never happened, and three years later GM filed for bankruptcy protection, driving the value of his stake down.
Though he dropped off the list of Wealthiest Angelenos for a time in the late 1990s and reappeared years later, Kerkorian was a presence for the more than 20 years the Business Journal has tracked wealth in Los Angeles. His estimated net worth of $16.1 billion in 2007 still stands as the highest total ever achieved by someone on the list.
