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| Lifestyles
of the Rich and Shameless |
Undergrads currently at Florida State University were only just starting school back in the mid 1990s when Al Dunlap, the ruthless CEO widely known as “Chainsaw Al,” was slashing his way to personal fortune as a layoff-happy corporate “restructuring”  specialist. So FSU students can be forgiven for not protesting when their university handed Dunlap a honorary degree last April. But FSU administrators don’t have that excuse. They went ahead with the honor, bestowed after Dunlap dropped a $5 million gift on the university, despite the $500,000 fine Dunlap has paid to settle federal charges that he cooked the corporate books at appliance-maker Sunbeam, his last CEO posting. At Scott Paper, Dunlap had laid off over a third of the company’s workforce and cleared a $100 million personal profit. At Sunbeam, Dunlap tried cutting the workforce by half, then played accounting games when the layoffs didn’t pay off as intended. Notes one critic of Dunlap’s honorific, PR executive Steve Cody: “What's next: The O. J. Simpson School of Sports Management at USC?” September 24, 2007 |
| Americans worth at least $25 million, note researchers from Prince & Associates, plan to leave at least 75 percent of their estates to their children — and these deep-pocket parents, the Wall Street Journal’s Robert Frank reported last week, are deathly afraid their offspring will waste that wealth away. But they’ve found a solution. They’re sending their twenty-something kids to summer camp. Specialized “wealth education” companies like the California-based IFF Advisors are charging $5,000 a place for intensive summer workshops that teach wealthy young adults the money-management basics, everything from investing in emerging markets to “how to persuade prospective spouses to sign a prenup.” The goal of the camps: to help wealthy young people grow up to become “good stewards of wealth.” That’s “wealth-management speak,” notes the Wall Street Journal’s Frank, for "not spoiled brats.” August 6, 2007 |
| Interested in becoming an oligarch? Do we have an MBA program for you! Russian President Vladimir Putin last month laid the cornerstone for the Skolkovo Moscow School of Management, the new world-class business school that’s bankrolled by “a who’s who of oligarchs taken from the Forbes rich list,” everyone from vodka baron Rustam Tariko (net worth: $2.5 billion) to oilman Roman Abramovich ($25 billion). The school’s 300 students, from inside and outside Russia, will take instruction — in English — from a faculty that includes top Russian oligarchs themselves. The entrance fee: $68,000. October 2, 2006 |
| From
Germany, the nation that gave us the kindergarten, comes a new departure
in early education: super day care for the super-rich. The new
Villa Ritz center for kids three to six, soon
to open in a trendy neighborhood outside Berlin, will feature
a sauna, bodyguards, and chauffeurs — at just $1,200 a month.
Villa Ritz, says co-founder Stephan Knabe, will stay open from
6 a.m. to 10 p.m., hours that will make the center ideal for “anyone
who earns a lot of money, but doesn't have much time for their
children.” March 20, 2006 |
 Parents
with deep pockets in New York seem to be paying a good
deal more for day care than their German counterparts — and
getting less. New York City's Riverdale Country School, the
Associated Press reports, charges over $2,000 per month for
preschool tuition, with apparently no sauna. Middle and high schools
tudents at Riverdale pay $31,200 in annual tuition, about $3,300
over the current tuition going rate at Harvard. March 20, 2006 |
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