Casino mogul Kirk Kerkorian is dead – SPIEGEL ONLINE

Kerkorian came on June 6, 1917 as the son of Armenian immigrants born. Even the age of nine he had to work to feed the family. “You get a boost that is a bit stronger than that of someone who inherits” he later recalled. In the eighth grade, he dropped out of school to become an amateur boxer. Under the name “Rifle Right Kerkorian” he made it to the welterweight champion. Through a friend he found his love of flying. During World War II he was flying for the British Air Force Mosquito-fighters across the Atlantic – for many pilots ended this deadly missions

His love, however, was Las Vegas, which he visited in 1944 for the first time.. “I was overwhelmed by the level of excitement in this small town,” he said once. “The best times of my life were in Las Vegas.” In 1947 he bought for $ 60,000 a tiny charter line that traveled between Los Angeles and Las Vegas. He called it Trans International Airlines, she brought in 1965 a successful IPO and sold it three years later to the financial group Transamerica – for $ 104 million. Kerkorian secured while $ 85 million in shares to Transamerica.

His first hotel deal he landed in 1962. There, he bought 32.3 acres of land on the “Strip” of Vegas, not even for a million dollars. Then came 1966, the opulent casino hotel Caesars Palace, to which he rented the land only four million dollars and then sold – for a further five million dollars. Of this he built his own hotel, the International (now the Las Vegas Hilton). With 1512 rooms, it was the largest hotel in the world, in his famous showroom were Barbra Streisand and Elvis Presley on. Even the legendary Flamingo, he secured.

trip failed in the car business

By slow share purchases, he secured until 1971 the ailing Hollywood studio Metro-Goldwyn Mayer (MGM) and converted it to a hotel and entertainment group. In the same year he opened the MGM Grand in Vegas, a $ 107 million Mega Resort expensive and once the largest hotel in the world. In a major fire in 1980 85 people were killed, it was the worst disaster in the history of the gambling town. 1986 sold the old Kerkorian MGM Grand and his sister’s house in Reno for nearly 600 million dollars to the casino Bally Company.

But Kerkorian was not tired. Through its spinoff company MGM Mirage, he built a new MGM Grand, as the old so now Bally’s was. It was inaugurated in 1993 and is today one of the most gigantic complex of Vegas, including amusement park. Its entrance is guarded by a 15 meter high bronze lion – the largest bronze statue in the United States. MGM Mirage also has quite a few others, world famous casino hotels in Vegas, including the Bellagio, the Mirage old, Treasure Iceland and New York-New York.

But not all succeeded. Kerkorian became time with the US Securities and Exchange Commission together, because of its often opaque ownership structure. Sometimes he suffered enormous losses, such as he, to pay off debts, had to repel shares that were worth ten times shortly afterwards. But he always remained true to his motto: “Work as if you’ll live forever games, die like you tomorrow..” Even the trip to the automobile business failed him. First he tried to get in with Chrysler, later on his holding group Tracinda – named after his daughters Tracey and Linda – the General Motors. After vainly wanted to force an alliance between GM, Renault and Nissan in 2006, he sold all his GM stock again. His fortune is estimated at four billion dollars.

will be remembered Kerkorian but as “King of Las Vegas”.