Billionaire Kirk Kerkorian dead at age 98 - USA TODAY
Billionaire investor, casino mogul and real estate titan Kirk Kerkorian, 98, who played an influential role in the rise of Las Vegas and once tried unsuccessfully to take over automaker Chrysler, died Monday night. "MGM Resorts and our family of 62,000 employees are 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," MGM Resorts International CEO Jim Murren said... Kerkorian combined brilliant business insight with steadfast integrity to become one of the most reputable and influential financiers of our time. Kerkorian, who held a majority of MGM Resorts International's stock until recent years and previously owned the separate MGM Studios, had a net worth of $4 billion, according to Forbes estimates. "When you're a self-made man you start very early in life," he told the Las Vegas Review-Journal in 1999. "In my case it was at 9 years old when I started bringing income into the family. You get a drive that's a little different, maybe a little stronger, than somebody who inherited. In the years after the war, he got rich off a business called Trans International Airlines, ferrying gamblers to Las Vegas on surplus warplanes Kerkorian had acquired. An early gamble in Vegas paid off handsomely for Kerkorian. Source: www.usatoday.com
