Saturday, 11th October 2008

 

Marrying a billionaire – brains more important than looks

Looks might have been important in the past to nab a very rich man, but having brains is now a bigger factor in billionaire marriages, according to a new survey.

Forbes’ recently published Billionaire Wives List cites the recent marriages of Google cofounders Sergey Brin and Larry Page as examples.

Brin last year married longtime girlfriend Ann Wojcicki – a Yale graduate who was working as a health care analyst when they met. She has since launched her own biotech start up.

Page married Stanford University doctoral student Lucy Southworth last December.

Melinda Gates, Bill’s wife, is no slouch in the brains department either, having completed an MBA from Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business. Melinda now plays a prominent role in managing the Gates Foundation.

Other “brainy” wives of billionaires include Anne Dias Griffin, the wife of Citadel hedge-fund boss Kenneth Griffin, who runs her own asset-management firm, Aragon Global Management. And Susan Dell, wife of tech tycoon Michael Dell, who runs her own successful fashion business.

But clearly “the trophy wife/girlfriend” still matters for many billionaires, with Donald Trump the most obvious example of this having married two ex-models.

Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich would also appear to have a preference for beauty – he recently started dating model Daria Zhukova soon after divorcing his second wife.

Brummel

Headline

Mayfair goes Modern

Sebastian + Barquet, a three-year old design gallery based in New York and Chelsea, is opening a new gallery showing museum quality pieces in Mayfair next month, the first in London to focus on international modernism from the 1940s to the 1960s. Its opening exhibition is dedicated to American modernist design and is curated by celebrated architect Eric Parry.

Rich Monitor

Texas billionaire sues Lehman for $60m

Texas billionaire T. Boone Pickens has filed a lawsuit against Lehman Brothers for $59.9m (€43.8m), accusing the failed Wall Street bank of violating its contract by failing to repay collateral posted by the energy baron, according to a Reuters report.

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