money, feel guilty of being wealthy, internet-made billionaire, Mark Cuban, doesn’t think there are any downsides to being a billionaire. For example, 83-year-old Chuck Feeney, an Irish-American philanthropist, has spent the last 30 years of his life losing his fortune to charity. The businessman made his money selling luxury duty-free goods to travellers across the world, but rejects the trappings of wealth himself. Feeney owns no home, car, boards a train anywhere he goes and famously wears a wristwatch that was reportedly bought for just $15 (N2,700). However, speaking at Business Insider’s IGNITION conference, Cuban said he hated hearing other billionaires give interviews in which they complained about the hassles of being wealthy or in the spotlight all the time. “I’m like, ‘Are you kidding me?’ I mean, that is the dumbest (thing) ever,” he reportedly said. In fact, when someone asks Cuban what the downsides are to being as rich and famous as he is, he reportedly responds, “There are no downsides! This is as good as it gets!” Cuban, who has an estimated net worth of about $2.7bn (N486bn), according to Forbes, owns a Texas-based American professional basketball team, the Dallas Mavericks. Even though he mentioned that all his visibility could “sometimes be a pain in the (butt)” because of social media, “it is not really a downside.” He said, “I’m the luckiest guy in the world. I only have to do what I want to do. I only have to do what I like to do. I mean, seriously, the hardest part is that it has to end sometime, and that’s the part that drives me crazy. And that’s it.” Cuban’s profile Mark Cuban, born July 31, 1958, is an American businessman, investor, and owner of the US National Basketball Association’s Dallas Mavericks, Landmark Theatres, Magnolia Pictures, and the chairman of the HDTV cable network, AXS TV. He was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA and grew up in the affluent suburb of Mount Lebanon, as part of a Jewish working-class family. His grandfather changed the family name from “Chabenisky” to “Cuban” after his Russian grandparents landed on Ellis Island. Cuban’s first step into the business world occurred at age 12, when he sold garbage bags to pay for a pair of expensive basketball shoes. While attending Mount Lebanon High School, Pittsburgh, he held a variety of jobs including a bartender, disco dancing instructor, and a party promoter. Rather than attending high school for his senior year, he enrolled as a full-time student at the University of Pittsburgh and after one year at the school, he transferred to Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana and graduated from the Kelley School of Business in 1981 with a B.S. in Business Administration. Since then, he has started several businesses, many of which he has sold for millions of dollars, which is the reason behind his billionaire status. Cuban sold the first company he started, MicroSolutions, for $6m (N1.08bn). And he did even better with the next company he founded, an internet company, broadcast, which he sold to internet giant Yahoo! for about $6bn (N1.08trn).
Posted on: Sat, 13 Dec 2014 10:44:38 +0000
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