Buffaloes and billions - Ted Turner update
Ted Turner, apparently, is not a happy camper. Or a jolly rancher. That is because it has been a bad year to own stock in AOL Time Warner and livestock in the form of bison. And Turner, the vice chairman of AOL Time Warner, owns a lot of both. His huge stake in AOL Time Warner - he is the company's largest individual shareholder - was worth $7.2 billion when the merger of America Online and Time Warner closed in January 2001. It is now valued at $1.76 billion.
Then there is the bear market in buffaloes. Turner, who is the largest U.S. landowner, with 1.8 million acres (730,000 hectares) in ranches in Montana and four other states, is also the largest breeder of buffaloes. He owns about 30,000 head, or 10 percent of the total in the United States.
Two years ago, the going price for buffalo was $2,000 a head, but is now only about $300, according to David Carter, executive director of the National Bison Association. That is a plunge of 85 percent - even more than the 77.9 percent decline in AOL Time Warner shares in the same period.
...Yet Turner's personal holdings are not solely a private matter. Few American billionaires have been as generous with charitable commitments as Turner...So far, Turner has given the United Nations Foundation $373 million. But that leaves $627 million due on the pledge. When he set up the foundation, Turner said he would donate $100 million a year, with the pledge to be paid off by 2007. Now, though, while he still plans to give the full $1 billion eventually, the payment schedule has been extended beyond the original 10 years, a foundation spokesman said.
...As for the price of buffalo meat, it has stabilized, according to Carter of the bison trade group. That is partly the doing of Turner, who recently started a restaurant chain, Ted's Montana Grills, to promote buffalo meat. "It is still a pretty small market," Carter said, "and the restaurants help promote it."