Homeless billionaire
Nicolas Berggruen, a 46-year-old American, owns a
three-billion-dollar fortune. The most interesting thing about this man
is the fact that the general public does not know anything about him.
Furthermore, he is officially a homeless man. Berggruen says that he
prefers to live in hotels.
When he made his
billion-dollar fortune on investments and media business, Berggruen
began to lose the interest in acquiring material values. Real estate,
cars, works of art, jewels and other valuable things have become a
burden for him. The billionaire started selling his property: apartments
in New
York, a villa in Florida. He intends to sell his last vehicle in
the nearest future too.
Berggruen is not married
and has no children. He plans to leave his fortune to charity by
setting up a special foundation. In addition, Berggruen will bequeath
his valuable art collection to a Berlin museum.
Nicolas Berggruen says that he has no place where he could keep his paintings because he has no home.
“Everybody
is different and I think that we live in a material world. But for me,
possessing things is not that interesting. Living in a grand environment
to show myself and others that I have wealth has zero appeal. Whatever I
own is temporary, since we’re only here for a short period of time.
It’s what we do and produce, it’s our actions, that will last forever.
That’s real value ,” Nicolas Berggruen believes.
It
is worthy of note that Berggruen tries to avoid communication with
reporters. He also does his best not to let his name appear in
newspapers and magazines. When a Dutch magazine published an article
about him, the billionaire simply bought all the copies of the magazine
and destroyed them.
Nicolas Berggruen is not
alone in his noble deeds. Passion for philanthropy and demonstrative
denial of material values has become a current trend of modern-day
billionaires.
Russ Alan Prince, who owns a firm
that tracks the habits of the rich, believes that modern billionaires
think about how they are going to be remembered after their death. Some
of them realize that if they want to do something then they have to do
it now, otherwise they will not have any time for it afterwards.
Labels: Homeless billionaire
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