Nicolas Berggruen

Nicolas Berggruen was born August 10, 1961, in Paris, the son of Heinz Berggruen, a German-Jewish art dealer who had fled the Nazis in 1936 and later assembled one of the great private Picasso and Klee collections, and the actress Bettina Moissi. He was expelled from Le Rosey, the Swiss boarding school, for what the school called sedition, then earned a finance degree at New York University in 1981. He trained under Max Rayne at London Merchant Securities, then under the Texas financier Sid Bass at Bass Brothers Enterprises, and by 1984, at 23, had founded Berggruen Holdings as his own investment vehicle, choosing leveraged buyouts and distressed assets over anything connected to his father's world of art.

Berggruen built his fortune buying distressed companies: he co-founded the hedge fund Alpha Investment Management in 1988, took over Germany's insolvent Karstadt department-store chain in 2010 for roughly 70 million euros plus a larger investment commitment, and folded a public shell company into a 29 percent stake in Burger King by 2012. In 2010 he founded the Berggruen Institute, seeding it with 100 million dollars and later adding a 500 million dollar endowment, to fund research on governance and philosophy across Western, Chinese, and Indian traditions. The following year he funded California's Think Long Committee, a bipartisan group trying to fix the state's budget and initiative process. He signed the Giving Pledge in 2010, promising to give away the bulk of a fortune built, deliberately, on assets other people had given up on.

The 'homeless billionaire' image, no house, a single suitcase, years spent living out of hotel suites while a private jet stayed on call, was itself a kind of branding, and it did not survive contact with his own later choices: in 2017 he bought a 20,000-square-foot Holmby Hills estate for 42 million dollars, and in 2021 a Beverly Hills property for 63.1 million more. The Karstadt rescue told a similar story. Berggruen took control of the failing German retailer in 2010 promising to save it, sold out his stake in stages between 2013 and 2014, and watched the chain file for insolvency again more than once in the years after he left, under owners who inherited a business his four years running it had not actually fixed.

Berggruen remains chairman of Berggruen Holdings and continues funding the Institute, which since 2016 has given out a 1 million dollar annual prize for philosophy and culture to thinkers including Martha Nussbaum and Michael Sandel. He had twin children in 2016, born via surrogate, his first. Whether the Institute amounts to a serious, lasting effort at cross-cultural governance research, or to a wealthy financier's expensive hobby in philosophy, is a question its own backers have not resolved, and Berggruen, still building it in his sixties, seems in no hurry to let anyone answer it for him.

Nicolas Berggruen's life against the full span of the corpus — the fading end marks a life still in progress.

• Berggruen Holdings company
  His own investment vehicle, founded at 23 1984
• Alpha Investment Management company
  Hedge fund with roughly 2 billion dollars under management 1988
• Karstadt acquisition company
  Took over Germany's insolvent department-store chain; sold out by 2014 2010
• Berggruen Institute company
  Funds cross-cultural research on governance and philosophy 2010
• Think Long Committee for California other
  Bipartisan effort to reform state governance 2011

• August 10, 1961 aged 0 Born in Paris, France
• 1981 aged ~20 Graduates NYU with a finance degree
• 1984 aged ~23 Founds Berggruen Holdings
• 1988 aged ~27 Co-founds Alpha Investment Management
• October 1, 2010 aged 49 Completes the Karstadt takeover and founds the Berggruen Institute
• 2010 aged ~49 Signs the Giving Pledge
• 2011 aged ~50 Funds California's Think Long Committee
• 2016 aged ~55 Has twin children via surrogate and launches the Berggruen Prize
• 2021 aged ~60 Buys a Beverly Hills estate reported at 63.1 million dollars

• Warren Buffett b. 1930
  Value investor whose disciplined approach built one of the largest personal fortunes in American history. co-signed the Giving Pledge with
• Bill Gates b. 1955
  Co-founder of Microsoft who, through the Gates Foundation, has donated billions to global health and education. co-signed the Giving Pledge with
• George Soros b. 1930
  Investor and founder of the Open Society Foundations, supporting democracy and human rights worldwide. fellow philanthropist-financier
• Francis Fukuyama b. 1952
  Political scientist whose The End of History and the Last Man sparked global debate on liberal democracy. brought onto the institute of