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Friday, 23 October 2015

Bad Celebrity Investments That Make You Go Hmmm

By Cornelius Nunev


While the miracle of celeb may elevate the status related to specific individuals, this does not mean that everything celebs touch turns to gold. Here are a few bad celebrity investments that may cause you to feel better at night.

Mark Twain investment

In the late 19th century, Mark Twain invested $150,000 to $300,000 on a machine called the Paige Compositor for 11 years. That was a ton of cash back then to throw into an investment. This famous author, known as the first modern celebrity in America by some, wanted this typesetter that was intended to be much faster than standard Linotype. The business passed away pretty quickly since the machine was hard to work with and had over 18,000 parts.

Jay-Z

Another example of a very poor investment was when Jay-Z decided to put up a 15,000-square-foot luxury hotel in the Chelsea neighborhood in 2007. He got a $52 million loan, and ended up not being able to pay it when the economy crashed in 2008. He defaulted on the loan, and the lender got the land back. The construction as never finished. It was not until December 2010 that the whole ordeal was over with out-of-court settlements.

Bono not investing wisely

The media and entertainment firm Elevation Partners is actually managed by Bono. The site 24/7 Wall Street said that Bono is "The worst investor in America" when he only got a $25 million return on investments in Palm ($460 million) and Forbes, Inc. ($300 million). He was very profitable when he invested in BioWare, Pandemic Studios, Yelp and Facebook.

Idea Larry King had

Talk show host King became embroiled in a life insurance scam that involved flipping policies for profit. King gave up two policies worth a total of $15 million, but only made back $1.4 million on the sale.

Bernie Madoff scam

The Bernard Madoff $65 billion Ponzi scheme ended up stealing money from over 200 investors, many of which were celebrities. Lots of people are trying to make up for the financial loss now that Madoff is in jail serving 150 years for 11 federal felonies.

Poor investment from Burt Reynolds

PoFolks was a restaurant chain opened in California, Texas and Florida by film star Burt Reynolds. He is not the only film star who has tried to make this investment. He wound up going bankruptcy in 1996 after losing $15 million on the project and after getting divorced from Loni Anderson. Bankruptcy court let him keep all the property unclaimed by Anderson and his $2.5 million mansion in spite of the belief that he was over $10 million in debt.

Just one more from Debbie Reynolds

Debbie Reynolds decided she wanted to open a Las Vegas casino and hotel in 1991, although she did not realize that being off the strip would make it extremely hard to stay in business. It was called the Debbie Reynolds Hotel and Casino, but she ended up selling it for $10 million to the World Wrestling Federation in 1998 after a 1997 bankruptcy. She wound up broke, and was even more serious off when having to sell all her film career memorabilia in 2010 when her museum went bankrupt.




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