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Sunday 6 October 2013

Bad Celebrity Investments That We Remember

By Cornelius Nunev


While the miracle of celebrity may elevate the status attributed to specific individuals, this does not mean that everything celebrities touch turns to gold. Here are some bad celebrity investments that may make you feel much better at night.

Making an investment as Mark Twain

A renowned author and humorist who has been called America's first modern celebrity, Mark Twain spent $150,000 to $300,000 (an enormous amount of cash back then) over 11 years during the late 19th century on a machine known as the Paige Compositor. This was a typesetter that was said to be faster than standard Linotype. Unfortunately, the machine had more than 18,000 parts and needed constant care, so the business perished.

Bad Jay-Z investment

The big investment mistake made by Jay-Z would not completely end until December 2010 when out-of-court settlements and legal battles finally ended. He bought land to produce a luxury hotel in New York City. The hotel was going to be 150,000 square feet and would be for luxury guests in the Chelsea neighborhood. He started the project in 2007 right before the economic crash. He ended up defaulting on the $52 million loan and shut down the project because of lack of funds. Hotel partners had to give the lender the property back.

Enormous losses for Bono

Bono was very successful in his investments with Facebook, BioWare, Pandemic Studios and Yelp. The only issue was that his confidence grew into investments in Forbes, Inc. ($300 million) and Palm ($460 million). These investments only brought a $25 million return for Bono, and he was called "the worst investor in America" by 24/7 Wall Street. He is the managing director for entertainment equity firm Elevation Partners presently.

Poor investment by Larry King

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.

Madoff conned them all

More than 200 investors, including celebrities were taken in by Bernard Madoff's $65 billion Ponzi scheme. Madoff is now in jail serving 150 years for 11 federal felonies, while celebrities and lower-profile investors are still trying to find ways to make up for their sizable financial loss.

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 movie star who has tried to make this investment. He ended 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 regardless of the fact 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 wound 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 last year when her museum went bankrupt.




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