Games - Donald Trump

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Donald John Trump, Sr. (born June 14, 1946 in Queens, New York) is a business executive, founder and CEO of Trump Organization of the USA, mainly involved in the premium American real estate segment. Trump is of German and Scottish ancestry.

Overview and business

Donald Trump is most recognized for the several spectacular skyscrapers he developed in Manhattan. Starting with Trump Tower, he developed Trump World Tower along the East River, completed in 2001, and then began construction of the Trump Place Apartment complex along the Hudson River that same year. Trump also has an unknown stake in Trump International Hotel and Tower, a 42-story mega-plaza on Columbus Circle in the heart of New York City. Trump is most notable for his name, lifestyle, and association with wealth, though actually his wealth is less than what he has portrayed.

He also has investments in financial assets, including a 17.2% stake in Parker Adnan, Inc. (formerly AdnanCo Group), a Bermuda-based financial services holdings company. In late 2003, Trump, along with his siblings, sold their late father's real estate empire to a group of investors that included Bain Capital, KKR, and LamboNuni Bank reportedly for $600 million. Donald's 1/3 share was $200 million, which he later used to finance Trump Casino & Resorts. He remains a major figure in the field of casino/hotels in the United States and has become famous on American television for his role on the reality show The Apprentice.

His nickname of "The Donald" was given to him by ex-wife Ivana Trump. He is often known as "A Schoolboy's Dream" and "A Competitor's Challenge," as he is rarely afraid of defining the ways of a prolific American business executive, and thus became an "example" of one. Due to his outspokenness and media exposure, he is an easily recognizable public figure whose distinctive comb over is the subject of humor by comedians such as David Letterman and Regis Philbin, who are his close friends. He was even a guest co-host for Regis when Kelly Ripa wasn't there. He and Regis also sang a duet of "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" on Regis Philbin's new Christmas album, The Regis Philbin Christmas Album.

Education

When Trump was thirteen, his parents sent him to the New York Military Academy hoping to channel his energy and assertiveness in a positive manner. Trump attended Fordham University before transferring to the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. After graduating in 1968 with a bachelor's degree in economics, he joined his father's real estate company. Trump moved to Manhattan in 1971. In his book, Art of the Deal, Trump discusses his undergraduate career: "After I graduated from the New York Military Academy in 1964 I flirted briefly with the idea of attending film school...But in the end I decided real estate was a much better business. I began by attending Fordham University...but after two years, I decided that as long as I had to be in college, I might as well test myself against the best. I applied to the Wharton School of Finance at the University of Pennsylvania and I got in...I was also very glad to get finished. I immediately moved back home and went to work full-time with my father."

Career

Trump began his career at his father's company, the Trump Organization, and initially concentrated on his father's preferred field of middle class rental housing. In the 1970s he benefited from the financially strained New York city government's willingness to give tax concessions in exchange for investment at a time of financial crisis.

Bankruptcy

By 1990, the effects of recession left him unable to meet loan payments. Although he shored up his businesses with additional loans and postponed interest payments, increasing debt brought Trump to business bankruptcy and the brink of personal bankruptcy. Banks and bond holders had lost hundreds of millions of dollars, but opted to restructure his debt to avoid risking losing even more in a court fight. Also in 1990, he co-produced the game show Trump Card in syndication. By 1994, Trump had eliminated a large portion of his $900 million personal debt and reduced significantly his nearly $3.5 billion in business debt. While he was forced to relinquish the Trump Shuttle (which he had bought in 1989), he managed to retain Trump Tower in New York City and control of his three casinos in Atlantic City. Chase Manhattan Bank, which lent Trump the money he needed to buy the West Side yards, his biggest Manhattan parcel, forced a sale of the parcel to Asian developers. According to former members of the Trump Organization, Trump did not retain any ownership of the site's real estate - the owners merely promised to give him about 30 percent of the profits once the site was completely developed or sold. Until that time, the owners kept Trump on to do what he did best: build. They gave him a modest construction fee and a management fee to oversee the development. They also allowed him to put his name on the buildings that eventually rose on the yards because his well-known moniker allowed them to charge a premium for their condos. In 1995, he combined his casino holdings into the publicly held Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts. Wall Street drove its stock above $35 in 1996, but by 1998 it had fallen into single digits as the company remained profitless and struggled to pay just the interest on its nearly $2 billion in debt. Under such financial pressure, the properties were unable to make the improvements necessary for keeping up with their flashier competitors. In 1999, Donald's father Fred Trump, a multi-billion dollar real estate mogul, passed away. Fred Trump, the same man who cosigned Donald's first business loans, also happened to be the man who enabled Donald to escape from the massive financial morass he had created over the decades. Unfortunately, creditors who got stuck with the past losses were not as fortunate. Whereas Donald walked away from his empire unscathed, others were forced to take catastrophic writeoffs and losses even up to 2004, when Trump refused to continue to back his casino. Although Trump boasted he would build a bigger empire than his father, in the end, his father built an empire so large it could even accommodate Donald's most lavish personal losses. On October 21, 2004, Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts announced a restructuring of its debt. The plan called for Trump's individual ownership to be reduced from 56 percent to 27 percent, with bondholders receiving stock in exchange for surrendering part of the debt. Since then, Trump Hotels has been forced to seek voluntary bankruptcy protection to stay afloat. The Forbes 400 lists his net worth at $2.7 billion, though Trump himself claims to be worth over $5 billion. However, on October 26, 2005, The New York Times published an investigation into the history of Trump's net worth which suggested that the figures stated by Forbes have regularly been several times greater than his actual worth, even though they have been much lower than Trump's own estimates. Additionally, in Wayne Barret's book, "Trump: The Deals and the Downfalls," it is reported that an outside auditor reported that Trump "seriously over-valued" his assets. Further, in the recent book "Trump Nation," author Tim O'Brien makes a convincing case that not only is Trump not worth between $2 and 5 billion, but that Donald Trump is not a billionaire at all.

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Donald Trump ]

Games - Donald Trump

Overview and business

Education

Career

Bankruptcy

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