- Jul 20, 2021
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Yep.... A brilliant businessman. If it was so easy to buy failing assets and run them into the ground making a profit along the way then why wasn't everyone doing it? You may disagree with the way that he has made his money but he started with nothing and accumulated about $20billion of wealth. Richest man for a year/second richest/top 5 richest.... Whatever!... it merely evidences that he can only be a brilliant business man. Mean SoB, absolutely, but I know lots of mean SoBs, none of which went from nothing to $20billion.You mean buying failing assets at cut prices and then letting them run into the ground, dealing with protests against poor working conditions and safety by buying his workers rights off them, keeping all base of operations and homes in tax havens whilst campaigning for brexit, sinking money into vanity projects like Belstaff, the Grenadier, etc etc. He was considered the richest man in the Times for a year, before they changed how they calculated accumulated wealth or something.
I'm not going to go into details. Suffice to say his wealth is down less to business acumen, and more to being a mean bastard. The dude is Mr Burns.
Oh, and the working class/council estate angle that gets used for these guys is tedious. Everyone was working class and lived in a council estate before the whole right to buy and aspiration bullshit in the 80s. Using it as some sort of handicap, like we should all be impressed that one of us serfs managed to do well, is really patronising.
FWIW - I grew up before the 80s and didn't grow up on a council estate (though I did have working class parents). The fact that he was able to make a fortune of about $20 billion, starting from his reasonably humble beginnings is remarkable mate. I really do find it strange how anyone could disagree with that.
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