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Ted Rogers Dead at 75 (pg. 3)
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| Ravist |
| quote: | Originally posted by VDub
You have to admire anybody who builds an empire out of nothing...
RIP Mr. Rogers...
I wonder which way the company will go... |
his dad OWNED a radio station, certainly he didnt build his empire out of nothing, he had help, his father was making pretty good money |
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| Sly_Guy |
| quote: | Originally posted by English Rachel
The Rogers centre - that land is worth 10 times what he paid for it.
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The only thing that really concerns me about this guy's legacy is he changed the name of the Sky Dome. He might have been the best person in the world otherwise, but it pissed the hell outta me when he did that. I will never call the building on that space of land the Rogers Centre. |
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| VDub |
| quote: | Originally posted by Chris Allen
Or his $42 million dollar island estate in Muskoka... |
Well for that he still has family... |
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| VDub |
| quote: | Originally posted by English Rachel
Exactly.
Like I said, he was worth $3bn. I am surprised that the total of $55m in donations in that article meant that he was Philanthropist of the year, 2002. He would have made that in bank interest over the 2 years they're speaking of.
55/3000 is less than 2%
Forgive me if I am not bounding around. |
You have to be kidding me....
$55 M is not enough for you????????
So what if he was worth $3 B...
He didn't have to give any away...
I can't believe that you criticize him for not giving half of his hard earned money to others...
And btw...
The Rogers corp is what makes him WORTH $3B...Do you expect him to liquidate half of his company to give even more to charity??? |
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| King_Mack |
| quote: | Originally posted by Ravist
his dad OWNED a radio station, certainly he didnt build his empire out of nothing, he had help, his father was making pretty good money |
His dad DID own a radio station, and a pretty sizeable company. Ted was only 5 when his father passed away, and lost pretty much all of his father's business, and his estate mostly was not left to his family due to his father not setting up an estate trust(they got screwed badly). They were left with a good amount of money but nothing to rave about.
In any case, Ive had the privilege of meeting him a few times, and he was nothing short of a gentleman and an exceptional person. He has done a lot in his career and he'll definitely be missed.
Rest in Peace |
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| English Rachel |
| quote: | Originally posted by VDub
You have to be kidding me....
$55 M is not enough for you????????
So what if he was worth $3 B...
He didn't have to give any away...
I can't believe that you criticize him for not giving half of his hard earned money to others...
And btw...
The Rogers corp is what makes him WORTH $3B...Do you expect him to liquidate half of his company to give even more to charity??? |
I stand corrected, he is actually worth $7.6bn according to the article at the top of the page.
$55m as a share of $7.6bn is 0.7%. I give away much more than that as a percentage of my income, as I am sure many people do. Less than bank interest.
You can agree or not agree, to me, a hailed philanthropist would have to give away more than 0.7% of his wealth. Otherwise we could all be, no?
Giving away 95% of your wealth - now that is serious philanthropy;
THE TIMES
Melinda and Bill Gates: saving lives
By Janice Turner
November 29, 2008
Melinda Gates is no ordinary rich man’s wife. With husband Bill, she has used her business acumen to save millions of lives. Janice Turner meets her to discuss philanthropy, wealth, parenthood – and why Bill sometimes cries.
If you had married the world’s richest man, how would you live? Perhaps when the private islands, yachts and jets, the parties and Paris couture start to pall, you might schedule in a little light do-gooding. Maybe you’d bestow a gift upon a symphony orchestra or endow a museum. Something elegant with social cachet. The world’s uglier problems – such as the global Aids epidemic – could be locked outside your gated mansion. Unlikely, then, you’d choose to spend your days in stinking slums or Indian hospices, embracing HIV-positive prostitutes or dying babies. Or becoming fluent in the science of infection-preventing vaginal gels.
But Melinda Gates is a rare rich man’s wife. She is not soignée or retinued or grand. Clutching her cardboard coffee cup, she wears a standard American businesswoman-style tan trouser-suit with little make-up, her long hair loose. She is warm, quick to laugh, with a Silicon Valley first-names informality. And she talks like a PowerPoint presentation – so fast that I later struggle to transcribe the tape, rapping out statistics and acronyms, her high-speed systematic mind breaking a subject down to its components, then double-clicking back to the bigger picture. She could still be the fast-track Microsoft executive she was before she married the proprietor and left to have his children. Except, sitting here in the Seattle offices of the Gates Foundation, she is not Bill’s employee or wife but his equal partner.
And it is a job not unlike being co-ruler of a small nation, considering every year she helps gives away more than the foreign- aid budget of, say, Australia. Since it began in 2000, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has donated $17.3 billion (£11.6 billion) and still has $35.1 billion at its disposal. In fact, Bill Gates has donated so much that this year he ceased to be the world’s richest man, after 13 years in the top slot – although the man who stole his title, US investment tycoon (and Bill’s sometime bridge partner) Warren Buffett, has pledged the Gates Foundation most of his $62 billion fortune, which he is already handing over in $1.6 billion annual instalments.
The magnitude of this wealth could change – if not save – the world. The Gateses have pumped staggering quantities into three causes: America’s education system, global development (specifically micro-finance and agriculture) and world health (in particular, mass vaccination programmes to eradicate diseases such as TB and malaria). It is World Aids Day on Monday, and it is HIV/Aids that Melinda Gates says categorically “is the number one problem that needs to get solved – and all the different initiatives it’s going to take to line that up will see us involved for the history of the foundation”.
Their approach to Aids combines the quintessentially American – an unshakeably can-do attitude, boundless energy and faith in scientific progress – together with the maverick risk-taking that created Microsoft. Free from electoral accountability, they can work with whomever they choose, speak out whenever they see fit. They readily took a pop at Pepfar, the Bush administration’s Aids fund and its ABC (Abstinence, Be Faithful, Condoms) strategy, for putting Christian Right morality before saving lives. Melinda cannot wait to work with Barack Obama’s incoming administration, although today, she is quick to praise Pepfar for giving three million people in the developing world access to the life-saving antiretroviral drugs that these days are taken for granted in the West.
The foundation’s priority is targeting women: abstinence is irrelevant if a girl is forced into early marriage, her fidelity does not guarantee that of her husband, and frequently the decision to use a condom is not within her control. “In sub-Saharan African, 55 per cent of people with Aids are female. Most are mothers and will die leaving four to seven children – that’s why there are twelve million orphans in the developing world – and what that does to the family structure is fundamental to what happens across the continent.”
The foundation has championed both the search for the Aids holy grail, a vaccine, and a new potential area of prevention, microbicides. “This is the most exciting development and they’re likely to be available in, hopefully, the next seven years,” says Melinda. “They’re either in the form of an odourless, clear jelly that a woman can use without her partner knowing, or a prophylactic pill that will block the ability of Aids to transmit itself.”
Frank and unembarrassable, Melinda Gates has made it her mission to break down the disproportionate stigma that burdens infected women, insisting on meeting prostitutes in India – to the horror of accompanying government officials. She is fuelled by the suffering of those she meets: a dying mother at Kenya’s Kibera slum lamenting how she was powerless to stop her husband infecting her, and the maid servant of a doctor who returned to her village to die rather than admit she had the disease. “He could have got her drugs in a heartbeat,” she says sadly, “but she was too ashamed.”
But why does she make so hard a life that could be luxuriously easy? Melinda lets out her big, throaty yelp of a laugh. “I’ll say to my mom, ‘I can’t imagine doing the cocktail party thing, the dressing-up, all the time.’ I like it sometimes, but all the time? It would be so meaningless to me. My mom knows that when I’m in India, to get into the slum, you kind of go through a garbage dump. And she says, ‘You know, Melinda, people can’t understand why you enjoy visiting those places so much.’ But I love being in the slums. That’s just a part of who I am, my whole background and experience.”
A Texan who still loathes Seattle’s gloomy British-style weather, Gates, now 44, was raised in a middle-income family – her father was an aerospace engineer – that scraped to fund her college fees but was imbued with a sense of civic responsibility. She quotes the motto of her Catholic school: “Serviam” (I will serve). Following her mother’s lead, she volunteered in local hospitals and schools, helping Mexican immigrant children who struggled with English. The ace student of her year, she graduated in economics and computers, ripe for a career at Microsoft, where she rose rapidly and ended up running a division handling more than $200 million of business.
Bill Gates’s family were wealthy by contrast, and his father, William Gates Snr (at 83, still active in the foundation) was a prominent lawyer. Yet the Gateses, too, had a sense of social duty. Bill’s late mother Mary, while dying of breast cancer, wrote Melinda and Bill a letter, in which she said, “For those to whom much is given, much is expected” – an aphorism that echoes Andrew Carnegie’s famous “He who dies rich, dies disgraced”. It was in honour of his mother, and to find an outlet for his retired and bereaved father, that Bill set up the foundation that will ultimately receive 95 per cent of their wealth, currently valued at $58 billion.
Even the few remaining per cent would ensure a gargantuan legacy for the couple’s three children: Jennifer, 12, Rory, 9, and Phoebe, 6. It is rare to meet a rich parent who does not fret that inherited wealth might sap their children’s drive or even derail their lives. But Melinda Gates says with utter certainty, “I know some families worry about that. I don’t. They know they are going to get an amazing education in the US. And then they are going to work. Believe me, that is already on their minds! We’ve taken them to the slums already, and the two older ones have been to South Africa. All age-appropriate, of course. One of my children is going to be volunteering with me in the local Seattle community, too. So I’d be surprised if it wasn’t baked in. Just as with me it’s baked in. My mom wasn’t dressed up and going to cocktail parties and saying that was important when I was growing up either.”
From the birth of their first child in 1996 to their youngest starting full-time school a decade later, Melinda Gates kept a low public profile. She makes stay-at-home motherhood sound a little like a start-up company she needed to get on track before she expanded: “I had to know they were well protected and we were on our way as a family.” But then she seems a formidably focused parent. She and Bill hold six-monthly strategy meetings to decide goals, plan family trips and list things they want the children to learn. She even produces a written report. I remark that she must be the most organised mother on earth. “Maybe over-organised!” she says and laughs heartily. Now, with her zeal and glow, she reminds me of many alpha mothers who, after a long stint at home, are delirious to be back in the challenge and thrust of work.
Even before they married, the Gateses had discussed dispersing Bill’s fortune. It was always just a matter of when. Bill believed he would be in his sixties before he got around to it (he is now 53). But they felt a rolling momentum to act sooner. “We were getting thousands of requests,” says Melinda. “Heartbreaking requests – cancer patients, a child needing a kidney? And you feel horrible turning those down. So we said to ourselves, my gosh, if we’re going to get going, we should work out what we stand for and target it.”
And Melinda had never forgotten her first visit to Africa in 1993 on safari. “As we went along in our nice shiny vehicles, I kept asking, ‘What’s going on here?’ The very few people who had shoes were men. The women were walking barefoot with bundles of sticks on their head and a baby in their belly and a baby on their back.” She returned home thinking, “I cannot turn away from what I saw.” Later, when the couple read a report about how millions of children were dying in the developing world from diarrhoea – a figure they initially thought must be a mistake – they set about applying themselves to the most intractable global problems.
The Gates Foundation approach is often dubbed “venture philanthropy”: they fund and shape projects, but leave agencies on the ground to do the work. Like the great American philanthropists – Carnegie, Rockefeller, Mellon – they see it as the duty of individuals, rather than governments, to address social ills. As entrepreneurs, they lack the knee-jerk aversion to the marketplace common among British liberals. Melinda cites the (RED) campaign, launched by Bono – which has persuaded Armani, Apple, Gap, American Express et al to create special products, the profits from which will be donated to fight Aids – as a beacon of caring capitalism. Bono is happy to return the compliment: “Melinda has supported (RED) since it was an embryonic idea. She and Bill helped birth it. What the Gates Foundation has done already is mind-boggling, and when the history books are written, it will be found to be responsible for having saved literally millions of lives.”
And the Gateses apply those same business principles that grew Microsoft to their new charitable empire. It is the opposite of conventional philanthropy, they have said, which sprinkles a thin layer of money on a problem to little lasting effect. Instead, they work out where they can make the most difference and get the maximum return. “We’ve just had a meeting to discuss where we are on the international partnership on microbicides,” she says. “What have we learnt? Why have some trials not been working? We’re reviewing the strategies at a high level. If they weren’t getting the results, we wouldn’t have reinvested.”
Other Microsoft girls may have worn T-shirts saying, “Marry me, Bill!”, but, although she is not the perfectly groomed arm candy favoured by most plutocrats, there is no doubt why he chose Melinda. She shares his relentless curiosity and the belief that no problem is too big or small, too global or too domestic to be solved – it just needs to be dissected, then exposed to the laser beams of intellect and knowledge. While mostly she is reluctant to discuss her private life, fearing any trivia will distract from the foundation’s mission, she is openly adoring when she talks about Bill.
It is only six months since Gates “transitioned” – as Melinda calls it – from Microsoft, handing over day-to-day running to concentrate on his philanthropic work. It was a joke among his co-founders that you could ring Bill late any Friday night and he’d still be at his desk. She says they see each other more now, travel together, and last night were both helping with their children’s homework. “Bill is a night owl. He thinks best at night. He reads deeply on all these foundation topics and he’ll get very engaged in a book and keep going until he’s done, even if that’s 2am.”
But clearly she is delighted that their relationship is no longer Mr Microsoft and his silent wife, but Bill and Melinda, running their foundation, lobbying governments, forging strategies, solving the insoluble hand in hand. “Bill and I are having a tremendous amount of fun working together,” she says. “It’s a very deep connection to be able to work with your spouse on something that your hearts are completely engaged in. I couldn’t think of anything better.”
The prince of geeks who ploughs through textbooks on epidemiology has in Melinda a sounding board, an intellectual partner. The couple thrash out differences on foundation priorities (more nuances, she says, than major issues) taking long walks near their home on the shores of Lake Washington, outside Seattle.
“Bill just came back from a trip to India with his dad. And the first thing he wanted to do was tell me all the things he’d learnt. When I return from Africa, the first person I want to talk to is Bill. I’ll say, ‘Oh, my gosh!’, and all these light bulbs go off. One of us will throw out a statistic and the other will say, ‘Are you sure that’s right?’ The other will say, ‘The team was mentioning this?’ And the other will say, ‘But that doesn’t really match what we saw in the field the other day.’ It’s a really nice way to work.”
Protective of his perception in the world, the cynics who say the foundation is just a means for Microsoft to soften its aggressive, monopolistic image, Melinda hopes the world will now see the other dimensions to Bill’s personality besides the hard-ass entrepreneur. “He has an incredible intellect and everyone knows that. But he also has a huge heart. You don’t do the foundation work with your head. You’re not moved to give your resources away just because the data shows some number. You’re moved because of caring and concern.” On field trips, she says, he frequently weeps at the stories of suffering. And, she adds, he is far funnier than people ever imagine.
When I ask if she has, despite her obvious disapproval of flash and flaunt, any personal extravagances, she squirms, then says finally, “We do have a very nice house.” The Gates mansion (estimated to be worth $113 million) looks in photos more like a software company’s industrial compound. Indeed, it was a legendary geek bachelor pad, a temple to high-tech gadgetry, until Melinda brought in the architects and transformed it into a family home, albeit one with a domed library, trampoline room and private cinema. Melinda still feels the need to justify it: “It allows us to have a family life and at the same time do the work we want to do on the world stage. When we go inside our house, it’s just us – there isn’t some gargantuan number of people around.”
Although her children use public parks and eat in local burger restaurants, mostly unhassled by chilled-out, down-to-earth Seattle folks, the Gateses still like to escape the public gaze. “We have the space at home. We could stay there all weekend if we wanted and not go out and be bothered. If we want to swim on a rainy Saturday in Seattle, we are lucky enough to have an indoor pool.” Indeed, one with an underwater sound system.
But many of the super-rich never leave their compounds, and decline to share their amassed fortunes. Still Melinda refuses to judge them, saying many do have philanthropic urges, but just don’t know where to begin. “Our role is to help show those people some of the ways to do it too. And showing them can be such fun.”
More than anyone I’ve ever met, Melinda Gates illustrates Freud’s dictum that – however much you own – the keys to happiness remain love and work. Perhaps she loves the slums because her experiences there seem authentic and vivid. But also because, although she is not self-righteous or saintly, she has a hint, perhaps from her Catholic upbringing, of missionary zeal. In the slums, she is not merely useful, but by dint of her immense wealth, a magical being. The rest of us behold Africa, with its latest horrors (Rwanda, Darfur, Congo) and permanent problems (famine, war, disease) in impotence and despair. But Melinda Gates is blessed with the power to change this. How must that feel? “It does feel great, but an enormous responsibility at times, too. I want to leave the world a better place in some way. And I find myself in an unusual situation of being able to, hopefully, help in some way.”
But unlike the Carnegies and Tates, whose philanthropy seemed, in part, a means of assuring their own immortality, the Gateses are not fixated by posterity. Certainly, many buildings will remain, bearing their name across the globe, but their foundation will not last in perpetuity. Their funds will be spent within 50 years of their deaths. And when Warren Buffett dies, he has instructed the foundation to spend his entire wealth within a decade.
Whether this is remarkably ego-less or a matter of those who earned the cash having the fun of spending it, Melinda Gates insists, “Our resources are for this century’s problems. I’m worried if today someone is getting antiretroviral treatment. Or whether today somebody is able to access a condom. Today whether they know their HIV status. I can’t predict what problems will come along in the next century. And if we leave some money to deal with them, who are the right people to oversee that?” The next generation, dealing with the next generation of problems, will have to hope for their own Bills and Melindas, perhaps as yet unborn.
Inspi(RED) ideas for the world
The statistics say it all: 33 million people worldwide currently live with HIV and Aids; 4,100 people die of Aids-related conditions every day. And that number is growing. Yet Aids is a preventable and treatable disease. It costs just 20p to fund the two daily antiretroviral pills needed to keep alive someone with HIV, but 70 per cent of people in sub-Saharan Africa live on less than £1 a day and cannot afford them.
That’s where (RED) comes in. (RED)’s primary objective is to engage the private sector in raising awareness and funds to help eliminate Aids in Africa (www.joinred.com). Companies whose products take on the (RED) mark contribute a significant percentage of the profits from the sales of those products to the Global Fund, the world’s leading provider of programmes to fight Aids, with a focus on the health of women and children. The fund also supports counselling, testing and education activities based on agreed performance targets, and disburses money in response to proven results.
Since 2006, more than $112 million has been generated by (RED), benefiting 2.5 million people. (RED) has already helped provide more than 93,000 people in Africa with life-saving antiretroviral drugs. If enough consumers buy (RED) products, those with Aids will stay alive longer and be able to take care of their families, contribute to their communities and live a fuller life.
Buying (RED) products saves lives: it’s as simple as that.
http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/...icle5205402.ece
Shameful, no? |
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| jalalinator |
| rip for sure ... |
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| VDub |
| quote: | Originally posted by English Rachel
Giving away 95% of your wealth - now that is serious philanthropy;
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That's serious stupidity...
I mean...What's the point??? |
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| English Rachel |
| quote: | Originally posted by VDub
That's serious stupidity...
I mean...What's the point??? |
What are you going to do with it, buddy? There are only so many pairs of Tiesto shoes you can own, you know. |
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| VDub |
| quote: | Originally posted by English Rachel
What are you going to do with it, buddy? There are only so many pairs of Tiesto shoes you can own, you know. |
Tiesto shoes???
What the hell are you talking about????
What am I going to do with it??
I'm going to keep it...
And when I die...My kids are going to keep it...
And then their kids....For generations to follow...
My family would never have to worry about money again...As much as I can do for them...
Anything else for anybody else...They'd be lucky to get...
And btw...
I admit that personally, I would give more away than he did...
But that doesn't make him anymore greedy....
in Tiesto....
I can't stand Tiesto.... |
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| English Rachel |
| quote: | Originally posted by VDub
Tiesto shoes???
What the hell are you talking about????
What am I going to do with it??
I'm going to keep it...
And when I die...My kids are going to keep it...
And then their kids....For generations to follow...
My family would never have to worry about money again...As much as I can do for them...
Anything else for anybody else...They'd be lucky to get...
And btw...
I admit that personally, I would give more away than he did...
But that doesn't make him anymore greedy....
in Tiesto....
I can't stand Tiesto.... |
Lol <3
We're talking BILLIONS - you can leave a pretty sweet legacy for many generations with just one billion. |
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| VDub |
| quote: | Originally posted by English Rachel
Lol <3
We're talking BILLIONS - you can leave a pretty sweet legacy for many generations with just one billion. |
My point is that he gave away a substantial amount of money and he helped alot of ppl...
That's all that matters...
If all he ever did was put one poor student through school and helped them to be a success, then he would be a great person...
Who cares how much he was worth... |
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