Wealthy, powerful people in the news:
Lego CEO
Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen
is taking down his own building blocks. The privately held Danish toy manufacturer said today it will close a factory in Switzerland and Hungary, and lay off 500 of its 9,000 worldwide staff. Lego, whose trademark interlocking bricks have been around for 68 years, suffered $124 million in losses last year. Consumers were not receptive to Lego's efforts to diversify into high-tech toys, clothing and watches. The company now plans to focus on its core business in building bricks and other games. Lego, which has theme parks in the U.S., Denmark, England, has shelved plans for a new Legoland theme park in Japan.
France's
Bernard Arnault
and veteran buyout investor
Thomas H. Lee
have teamed up to create a European leveraged buyout firm to invest in financial services, telecommunications and consumer products companies. The joint venture, called
TH Lee Groupe Arnault Partners
, is the latest move by a U.S. buyout firm to take advantage of private equity opportunities there. The veteran dealmakers will put together a team of about a dozen investment professionals for the new joint venture, which will initially have offices in Paris and London. Lee's Boston-based buyout firm just raised a $6.1 billion fund, the largest in history. That fund will work alongside TH Lee Groupe Arnault Partners to help find European growth companies. Arnault, chairman of holding company
Groupe Arnault
and Lee, chairman and CEO of
TH Lee, Putnam Capital
, will sit on the company's investment committee.
More bad news for
Gateway
, one of the computer makers hardest hit by the economic downturn.
Theodore Waitt
, co-founder and recently returned CEO, told industry analysts yesterday that the company did not expect to expand sales or be profitable until the second half of 2001. Waitt recently ousted former CEO
Jeffrey Weitzen
More...
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