Tycoon | featured news

In one of the most significant gifts in the history of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the philanthropist and cosmetics tycoon Leonard A. Lauder has promised the institution his collection of 78 Cubist paintings, drawings and sculptures.

Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky, whose body was found in the locked bathroom of his luxury mansion near London over the weekend, died by hanging, British police said on Monday.

A lawyer for IMF chief Christine Lagarde says French investigators have searched her Paris home today as part of an inquiry into her role in a $400 million arbitration deal in favor of a tycoon. The laywer, Yves Repiquet (eev ruh-PEE-kay), says Lagarde has nothing to hide and he welcomed Wednesday's search as another step in proving her innocence.

In an epic battle between two Russian billionaires that became a riveting window on the murky and sometimes murderous business culture of post-Soviet Russia, a High Court judge rejected a $5.8 billion claim on Friday that pitted Boris A. Berezovsky, a London-based émigré, against Roman A. Abramovich, owner of London’s Chelsea football club.

Former jet-setting Texas tycoon R. Allen Stanford, whose financial empire once spanned the Americas, was sentenced Thursday to 110 years in prison for bilking investors out of more than $7 billion over 20 years in one of the largest Ponzi schemes in U.S. history.

A group of high-tech tycoons wants to mine nearby asteroids, hoping to turn science fiction into real profits. The plan is to use commercially built robotic ships to squeeze rocket fuel and valuable minerals like platinum and gold out of the lifeless rocks that routinely whiz by Earth. One of the company founders predicts they could have their version of a space-based gas station up and running by 2020.

Former Tyco International Ltd. CEO L. Dennis Kozlowski has lost a bid to get out of the New York prison where he's serving time for taking millions of dollars in unauthorized bonuses....

An anti-corruption regulator said it had arrested Raymond and Thomas Kwok, billionaire brothers who run the biggest real estate company in the city, accusing them of suspected corruption.

Russian tycoon Alexander Lebedev has punched a fellow billionaire on a television panel show after a discussion on the financial crisis degenerated into petty name-calling.

Macau casino magnate Stanley Ho has dropped a lawsuit against family members in the latest twist of a dynastic tussle over the ailing octogenarian tycoon's multi-billion dollar empire.