Tycoons Weekly Update

The little boy who refused to grow up, ultimately he become the legions of fans and the Peter Pan of pop music across the world. But on the verge of another attempted comeback, he is suddenly gone, this time for good. Yes. I am talking about Michael Jackson popularly called as Michael.
Michael Jackson was pronounced dead on Thursday afternoon (Friday early morning, local time) at U.C.L.A. Medical Center after arriving in a coma, a city official said. He was only 50, but out these 50 years he spent 40 years in the public eye.

Which Michael Jackson will be remembered? The unsurpassed entertainer, the gifted and driven song-and-dance man who wielded rhythm, melody, texture and image to create and promote the best-selling album of all time, “Thriller”? Or the bizarre figure he became after he failed in his stated ambition to outsell “Thriller,” and after the gleaming fantasy gave way to tabloid revelations, bitter rejoinders and the long public silence he was scheduled to break next month?

In the end, the superstar and the recluse were not so far apart.

Jackson built his stardom on paradox. As a child star he was precocious; as an adult he was childlike. His only competition was himself. Within the razzle-dazzle of his songs, he sang about fears and uncertainties in that high, vulnerable voice: flinching from monsters in “Thriller,” wishing he could just “Beat It” when trouble began.

He was a racial paradox, too: an African-American whose audience was never segregated, but whose features grew more Caucasian and whose skin grew lighter through his career, to discomfiting effect. His own face had become a mask.

All of Jackson’s show-business skills — the ones he learned under his father’s sometimes brutal instruction and then within the Motown Records hitmaking assembly line — were at once a way to please the broadest possible audience and to shield himself from them, safe within his own spectacle.

Despite all his time onstage and on the air, Jackson stayed remote: styled, rehearsed and choreographed. He had one of history’s largest audiences, and it never really knew him.

There was no denying his talent. His voice leaped out of the radio in Jackson 5 songs like “I Want You Back,” even for those who didn’t see how he danced on television. He internalised Motown’s philosophy of making music for a broad audience — not just a black or white audience as pop grew increasingly segmented in the 1970s — and when he took over his own career, with “Off the Wall” in 1979, he applied that philosophy to the newest sounds he could find, in and out of discos.

His ambition was seductive when he urged “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough.” He offered something to everybody on “Thriller,” which may have been the most strategic crossover album to date: a duet with a Beatle in “The Girl Is Mine,” dizzying electronic beats in “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’,” rock guitar in “Beat It.”

His established stardom helped get his African-American face onto MTV, breaking what seemed like a colour line, in what was a hugely beneficial step for both. Jackson wasn’t just an old-school show-business expert who could sing and dance onstage in real time; he was also more than ready for the music-video era, turning his songs into high-concept video clips that fit the chorus-line production of old Hollywood musicals into television-sized nuggets.

His dance moves were angular and twitchy, hinting at digital stops and starts rather than analogue fluidity — except, of course, for his famous moonwalk, the image of someone striding gracefully without ever leaving centre stage.

The world-beating success of “Thriller” was Jackson’s triumph and burden. He had the sales, the Grammy Awards, the screaming audiences in every country he toured. And he would spend the rest of his career trying to repeat the experience working many of the same manoeuvres into his music: another duet, another rock guitar, another ratcheting dance track. Jackson never stopped being catchy, but behind the sheen some of the songs grew darker and stranger, like “Smooth Criminal,” with its intimations of violence, on the 1987 album “Bad.”

Jackson laboured; his albums came four, five, six years apart. The hip-hop era had arrived, with its bluntly candid lyrics and quick-and-dirty productions, both contrary to Jackson’s style; he tried to keep up the crossover with raps from the Notorious B.I.G., but that didn’t buy him street credibility.

The songs grew increasingly divided between benevolent messages like “Heal the World” and spiteful ones like “Why You Wanna Trip on Me” on his 1991 album “Dangerous.” On his 1995 album “HIStory” — which started out as a greatest-hits collection but added a second album of new songs — Jackson’s fury boiled over in new songs like “They Don’t Care About Us” and “Tabloid Junkie.”

Part of the pop audience — and critics, too — took pleasure in Jackson’s setbacks. The underlying sweetness that had made Jackson endearing, even at his strangest, had curdled, and he couldn’t resuscitate it for his final album, “Invincible,” in 2001. He was working on a stadium spectacle for shows in London this summer, and we will never know if all his skill and showmanship could have given him a new start.

A Special Report published on 03.11.09, 06:00 PM EDT and Edited by Luisa Kroll, Matthew Miller and Tatiana Serafin said that the richest people in the world have gotten poorer, just like the rest of us. This year the world’s billionaires have an average net worth of $3 billion, down by 23% in last 12 months. Report say’s that last year was a very tough year for the richest people.

There were 1,125 billionaires in the year 2008 but this year (2009) there are only 793 people rich enough to enroll in the billionaires list and a 29.51% decline from the last year’s total billionaires. The world has become a wealth wasteland. Like the rest of us, the richest people in the world have endured a financial disaster over the past year.

From the last year’s list of 1,125 billionaires, 373 billionaires (Old) fell out of the current year’s list and a 33.16% decline from the last year. Out of 373 billionaires, 355 billionaires decline due to fortunes and 18 billionaires died. There are only 38 new billionaires plus 3 (old) tycoons who returned to the list after regaining their 10-figure fortunes. Since 2003, this is the first time the world has had a net loss in the number of billionaires.

The world richest people are also having gotten poorer. Their collective net worth is declining. This year their collective net worth is $2.4 trillion, decreasing by $2 trillion from the last year. Their average net worth is $3 billion a fell by 23% in comparison to the last year and which is equal to the average wealth of 2003.

World Number one richest man Bill Gates lost $18 billion but regained his previous title as the No.1 richest man. Warren Buffett, last year’s No. 1, lost $25 billion as shares of Berkshire Hathaway fell nearly 50% in 12 months and dropped one steep down to No.2, Mexican telecom titan Carlos Slim Helú also lost $25 billion and dropped one steep down to No. 3.

Last year’s biggest gainer India Anil Ambani is the biggest loser of dollars in this year. He lost $32 billions (Total 76% of his wealth) as shares of his Reliance Communications, Reliance Power and Reliance Capital all collapsed.

Ambani and another 23 Indian billionaires, all are gotten poorer than a year ago. Due to India’s stock market tumbled by 44% in the last year and depreciation of Indian rupee by 18% against the dollar, another 29 Indians entirely lost their billionaire status. As a result India lost its top position in Asia for billionaires. Now the title goes to China, which has 28 billionaires.

Russian industrialist Dmitry Pumpyansky from the resource-rich Ural mountain region lost $5 billion as shares of his pipe producer, TMK, sank 84% And Vasily Anisimov lost $3.2 billion as the value of his Metalloinvest Holding and his real estate holdings fell. Last year Moscow with 74 tycoons overtook New York (with 71 tycoons) as the billionaire capital of the world. But at present (this year) there are 27 in Moscow and 55 in New York.

Last year there were 39 American billionaire hedge fund managers; this year there are 28. Eleven American private equity tycoons dropped out of the billionaire ranks.

Stephen Schwarzman, who lost $4 billion, and Kohlberg Kravis & Roberts’ Henry Kravis, who lost $2.5 billion, retain their billionaire status despite their weaker fortunes.