Armenian-born billionaire Kirk Kerkorian dies at 98

PanARMENIAN.Net - Kirk Kerkorian, an eighth-grade dropout who traded his way to a $15-billion fortune and for a time was the richest person in Los Angeles, has died. He was 98, Los Angeles Rimes reports.

Kerkorian’s death was confirmed Tuesday, June 16 by Anthony Mandekic, the CEO of Kerkorian’s company, Tracinda Corp. Kerkorian died Monday evening at his home in Beverly Hills.

"He was the most brilliant person I've ever run across, and so respectful of everyone," Mandekic told The Times. "He gave everything he could, right to the end."

"We have lost such a great icon. He was truly something special."

Kerkorian took an unlikely path to tremendous wealth. He didn't invent a ubiquitous product, like software entrepreneur Bill Gates, or specialize in one industry, like entertainment czar Sumner Redstone, or patiently nurture the same holdings for decades, like investment master Warren Buffett.

Instead, Kerkorian bought and built and sold and bought again. He bought MGM Studios three times, always to his benefit, if not the studio's.

He accumulated large chunks of Chrysler Corp. when the automaker was considered all but defunct in the early 1980s, selling as it recovered. He did the same with a beleaguered General Motors in 2005, less successfully but still profitably.

Kerkorian instinctively sensed the promise of Las Vegas on his first visits immediately after World War II, when it was an isolated desert town with only one luxury hotel, mobster Bugsy Siegel's Flamingo.

He eventually acquired many of its most famous properties, including the Bellagio, the Mirage and the MGM Grand.

“I've had more people tell me, did you envision this or that?” Kerkorian told The Times in a rare interview in 2005. “I just lucked into things. I used to think that if I made $50,000 I'd be the happiest guy in the world.”

He opened the first MGM Grand in Las Vegas in the 1970s, the world's largest resort hotel at the time, and years later he built another MGM Grand, then also the world's largest.

Jim Murren, chief executive of MGM Resorts International, said in a statement Tuesday that the company was "honoring the memory of a great man, a great business leader, a great community leader, an innovator, and one of our country’s greatest generation." Kerkorian always tried to act with a minimum of flamboyance. He never would have named a hotel after himself, the way his Las Vegas rival Steve Wynn did. When he wasn't making deals, his great joys were playing tennis with friends and in seniors competitions, and going with the masses to the movies at local theaters in Century City and Westwood.

On the other hand, he had a 190-foot yacht, a Boeing 737 jet, and bought a second estate in the flats of Beverly Hills for those nights when the trip to his 30-acre Benedict Canyon compound was just too much.

In 2011, Kerkorian's Lincy Foundation transferred $200 million to UCLA and ceased operation. Founded in 1989 and named for Kerkorian’s daughters Linda and Tracy, the foundation reported giving away more than $1 billion before closing. Half the money given to UCLA was earmarked for medical research, scholarships and other projects. The other $100 million created the “Dream Fund” for charitable causes around the country.

"I've always felt he's the most complicated man,” the late financier George Mason, one of Kerkorian's best friends, said in 2005. “Yet he's also the most simple man. He thinks differently than most of us. He finds the gut issue and focuses on that. Most of us are fluttering around the peripheral.”

In a 1969 interview with Fortune magazine, Kerkorian explained his strategy: “I don't try to get all the meat off the bone. When I get a good figure, I just move something. Too many people try to hit the peak price and they hold on until it is too late.”

His survivors include daughters Tracy Kerkorian and Linda Ross Hilton Kemper and three grandchildren.