The world’s future in Bermuda shorts

Well, they weren’t exactly in Bermuda shorts the entire time. Mostly, the big boys of America’s billionaire’s boys club went about in collared T-shirts and rubber shoes in this year’s annual Allen Conference in Sun Valley, Idaho strolling with their wives and kids and grandchildren under the unusually scorching sun. Rubber shoes had to be Nike. Phil Knight, founder of the rubber shoe company that “began as a small distributing outfit located in the trunk” of the former college runner’s car was attending the conference. Today, Nike is a global giant with sales up to $16 billion from $15 billion the year before — making Knight the sixth wealthiest in America with a net worth of $8 billion.

It was in this same conference two years ago that Knight presented to the group the idea of “Design Your Own Nike Shoe” and it was nothing new that CBS top honcho Les Moonves or Microsoft legend Bill Gates himself  lined up to experiment on designing their own pair. As I remember, it was also in this conference that Sony presented its vision of ordering and archiving movies of your choice from your own home. The product prototypes of some of the biggest communication companies are always something to look forward to in the yearly summer get-together. It wasn’t unusual that the billionaires look forward to the freebies, too.

This year, the latest voice-activated cellphones were given away courtesy of Microsoft (Gates told the phone, “Pizza!” and the phone showed a directory of pizza places. Gates said, “78th and Madison!” and the phone dials on its own). This is the gathering of some 300 of the biggest names in media, business and investment banking in the US where they share a week of outdoor barbecues, private dinners, tennis, yoga, Pilates, hiking, trail biking and fly fishing. 

In the mornings, there are two or three topics presented by the chairmen and CEOs, no less, addressing current issues and mapping out the next big thing from their companies. They’re CBS, Sony, Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, Dreamworks Animation, The New York Times, McDonald’s, Intel, Time Warner... You might say that the guys who determine the world’s future come together in one room every morning for a week. They make presentations, ask each other questions, rib and roast each other and exchange wholesome American jokes. Certainly, in between the physical and mental activities were the private meetings to make pitches, clinch deals and forge mergers. No one really knows for sure what Warren Buffet talks about with NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg over brunch but the press certainly aspires to get in first on the developments while the paparazzi are kept from a distance to take snapshots of the very rich and the very richer.

What you’d learn in one week listening to the speakers could easily be the equivalent of education that would, hopefully, come your way or information that, ideally, you’d find time to pursue — in between work and sleep — in all of two years. I’ve got a whole pad filled from the first to the last page with notes on what the speakers presented.  These are speakers you can only dream of  coming to the Philippines to make any kind of presentation. They’d probably have to be lured by a bright white light to extend such charity; be paid millions (of dollars) or be held at gunpoint all through a 13-hour flight.  Over a few articles in this series I’d love to share information that could serve well.  And this is information short of classified.  Despite what I intend to edit (not all of what went on there is printable) it should be interesting, at the very least.

But, before that — allow me to impress you with the list of luminaries in the fields where green bucks might as well grow on trees; where the gazillionaire’s boys club is as exclusive as a group of all of 10 people in one table; where a 74-year-old Rupert Murdoch, in all of his $9-billion net worth, has a new thirtysomething Chinese wife and a four-year-old kid and he’s screaming “Never say die!” because he’s out to buy Dow Jones & Company. When we got back home, it was all over the business pages.  Murdoch, head of a global broadcasting empire worth 30 billion pounds, acquired the Dow Jones.

On the last big social in an afternoon poolside party, we were right beside the table of the big boys. Correction. Everyone invited to this annual summer vacation is a big boy. But this table was the table with the biggest boys. Even among the rich, the richest flock with the richest. Murdoch was seated with Warren Buffet, chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, author of the bestselling How to Get Rich books and with a net worth of $52.4 billion. Others in their table were Bill Gates, No.2 wealthiest with $56 billion, NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg (he still wouldn’t answer the question directly. So we still don’t know if he’s running for the US presidency or not as an independent); former British Prime Minister Tony Blair — guest of honor and speaker for the conference; and the youngest among the big boys is probably Sergey Brin, co-founder and president of Google, Inc. — net worth is $16.6 billion at 34 years of age.  

Presenting the state of his empire in faded denims and crocs footwear, Brin dodged bullets and arrows from the group about the evils that their latest acquisition, the YouTube, has brought on the worldwide public. More on that discussion in succeeding articles of this series.

Other luminaries and celebrities you’d most likely bump into in the restaurants, hiking, target shooting, swimming or biking were Craig Barrett, chairman of Intel Corp., General Electric CEO Jeffrey Zucker, IAC chairman and CEO Barry Diller with his longtime friend and now wife designer Diane Von Furstenberg and her children, Michael Dell, chairman of Dell Inc., Jerry Reinsdorf, owner of the Chicago Bulls, Jeffrey Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.Com, Inc., Meg Whitman, president and CEO of eBay Inc., and many more. I was particularly agog with retired news anchor-like-they’ll-never-make-them-like-he-used-to-be Tom Brokaw who’s now with General Electric Co., the unassuming, quiet and friendly Thomas Friedman, foreign correspondent for the New York Times and star journalist-of-the-moment CNN’s Anderson Cooper who is shorter and whiter than I’d imagined but not less cute than I’d expected. Hobnobbing with these guys would easily make the deluded believe he were one of them. 

The captains of the world’s biggest industries greet you, smile, monkey around and line up for the burgers like everyone else.

(E-mail the author at korina_abs@yahoo.com)