IN the past five years the “other” Microsoft co-founder has squandered more than a third of his fortune, according to an investigation in Business Week entitled “The $12 Billion Education of Paul Allen”.
Allen now appears to be making an effort to stop writing blank cheques, especially after his Portland Trail Blazers basketball team managed to lose $100 million last season — more than any other sports team in history. The basketball team (he also owns a football team, the Seattle Seahawks) was not the only investment to leave his wallet bloodied: Allen paid $8 billion for a stake in Charter Communications, a cable television company, that is now worth just $2 billion; similarly, Allen bet $1.7 billion on another high-tech company called RCN and walked away with a pitiful $2 million. All this has been a crushing embarrassment for him.
In response to the article, Allen pointed out that he had hired a new investment chief at his company, Vulcan, and streamlined his mishmash of investments from 100 companies down to just 40.