The Vanity Fair 100 the New Establishment 2010 Business Vanity Fair

The 2010 Next Establishment

Peter Newcomb and Adrienne Gaffney

report on the achievements of those

who might find their way onto the

next New Establishment list.

THE NEW ESTABLISHMENT 2010

The Vanity Fair 100Many of the moguls on V.F.’s annual list of the 100 most influential have rebounded froma disastrous 2009, but the hoodie-and mock-turtleneck-wearing top two never even sloweddown.

OCTOBER 2010

Two years ago, when Facebook recruited its 100-millionth user, a celebratory toga party

was thrown by C.E.O. Mark Zuckerberg, a classics buff who is prone to spontaneously

reciting Homeric verses from memory. Since then the stunningly successful Web site has

quintupled its size to a staggering half-billion participants worldwide, and that slender 26-

year-old cloaked in the hoodie—Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world like a

Colossus! This year Vanity Fair anoints Zuck as our new Caesar. He rules from the

imperial capital of Palo Alto, California, the Rome of our nascent millennium. In this, the

16th annual ranking of the 100 most

influential people of the Information Age, V.F. has

also heaped some new honors on that other prince

of Palo Alto, Steve Jobs, now that his Apple is worth

even more than those great conquerors Google and

Microsoft. Time and again Jobs has ascended the

stage to reveal what he would majestically proclaim

to be yet another revolutionary device that would

transform media and communications—and every

time he has been remarkably prescient. Upon what

meat doth this our Caesar feed that he is grown so

great? He’s a vegan!

» Go the 100

—By Alan Deutschman, Peter Newcomb, Richard Siklos, Duff McDonald, and Jessica

Flint. Research and reporting by Adrienne Gaffney.

MARK ZUCKERBERG

FACEBOOK

WORLD-DOMINATION WATCH: The wildly

OIL SPILL WALL STREET HOLLYWOOD’S TOP 40 MEDIA BRYAN BURROUGH MICHAEL LEWIS BETHANY MCLEAN MICHAEL WOLFF

2/9/2010 The Vanity Fair 100 | The New Establi…

vanityfair.com/…/the-vf-100-201010?… 1/32

popular social-networking Web site, valued at

around $25 billion, added its 500-millionth member

this summer, and those “friends” share more than

30 billion pieces of information a month. Facebook

runs more banner advertisements than any other

Web site (176 billion a quarter) and drives more U.S.

visitor traffic to some sites than even Google.

Revenues this year could reach $2 billion.

THE PRICE OF MOGULDOM: In June, at The

Wall Street Journal’s D8 conference, as columnists

Walter Mossberg and Kara Swisher interrogated him about privacy issues, Zuckerberg

appeared uncomfortable, sweated profusely, and even—gasp!—took off his signature black

hoodie.

Photograph by Brian Solis.

STEVE JOBS

APPLE

STAGE OF GLOBAL CONQUEST: Having saved

the music business and conquered the smartphone

market, Jobs is now looking to salvage the

publishing industry—and forever alter the world of

mobile computing—with the iPad. Released amid a

Parousian frenzy, the one-and-a-half-pound

computer tablet sold one million units in just 28

days, a milestone that took the now ubiquitous iPod

nearly two years to reach. With sales of iPhones

expected to top $20 billion this year, up from $630

million in 2007, it’s no wonder that Apple blew past

Google and Microsoft to become the most valuable

tech company on the planet.

UNLIKELY FOE: Consumer Reports, which, even after Jobs finally addressed the

iPhone 4’s antenna issues, refuses to recommend the phone.

Photograph by Matt Yohe.

SERGEY BRIN, LARRY PAGE, and ERIC

SCHMIDT

GOOGLE

SWORN ENEMY: Steve Jobs, who characterized

Google’s motto, “Don’t be evil,” as bullshit. Jobs

reportedly felt betrayed by his erstwhile allies for

their muscling in on the lucrative mobile-devices

business, which the geekocracy now believes is the

future of computing. Critics predicted that Google’s

Android phones might eclipse the iPhone by 2012.

It’s war between the two companies now, a

surprising shift from not long ago, when Schmidt sat

on Apple’s board, Brin and Page looked to Jobs as a

mentor and role model, and Brin and Jobs would

take walks together in the Santa Cruz Mountains.

ROAD NOT TAKEN: Ken Auletta revealed in Googled that the trio discussed buying The

New York Times.

Photograph by Patrick McMullan Co. (Brin, Page) and Charles Haynes (Schmidt).

RUPERT MURDOCH

NEWS CORPORATION

BUSINESS AS USUAL: The 79-year-old media



mogul is at his best when waging war with those he

perceives to be his rivals (The New York Times,

Time Warner Cable, Google). His latest adversary:

online news aggregators that steal (his word)

content from his far-flung media outlets. Last year

he threatened to remove all News Corp. content

from Google’s search engine (an apparent bluff),

and then announced that if people wished to read

some of his papers online they would have to pay a

price. It’s a battle he is unlikely to win, but it’s

helping turn Murdoch into something of a print-

world savior.

HOLLYWOOD RELATIONS: Thanks to director James Cameron’s Avatar, the Fox

film division posted a record quarterly profit of $497 million.

Photograph by Patrick McMullan Co.

JEFF BEZOS

AMAZON

HIGH POINTS: Bezos’s pioneering Kindle has

captured about 60 percent of the U.S. e-reader

market, though now it’s being challenged by Apple’s

way-cool iPad and Google’s soon-to-open online

bookstore. Amazon now sells more digital books

than hardcover ones.

THORN IN HIS SIDE: John Sargent, the C.E.O.

of Macmillan, one of the Big Six book publishers,

opposed Amazon’s effort to impose a top price of

$9.99 for e-books, which would have undercut the

much higher prices (and profit margins) for paper

ones. As punishment Bezos dropped Macmillan’s titles, but later relented and agreed to sell

them for “needlessly high” prices.

Photograph by James Duncan Davidson.

BERNARD ARNAULT

LVMH

WHEN CASH IS KING: Europe’s richest man

nearly doubled his net worth, to $27.5 billion,

according to Forbes, as Arnault guided his luxury

empire through the worst of the global downturn

and surfaced strongly in early 2010.

PERSISTENT RUMOR: Arnault is said to be

interested in buying the Hermès Group, the famed

French leather-and-fashion house, but the dynastic

family isn’t interested in selling.


MICHAEL BLOOMBERG

MAYOR, NEW YORK CITY; BLOOMBERG L.P.

STAGE OF GLOBAL CONQUEST: Though the

mayor occasionally gets swept up in small fights

(smokers, soda drinkers, food vendors), New York is

in as good a shape as it has ever been. Bloomberg

has reduced crime, improved public education, and

instituted a number of large-scale civic initiatives

that are as ambitious as any big city’s in the country.

GOOD HELP IS HARD TO FIND: This summer,



a trusted political consultant, John Haggerty Jr.,

was accused of stealing $1.1 million from the mayor

during last year’s election campaign (he has pleaded

not guilty). Haggerty allegedly used most of the money to buy a house.


LARRY ELLISON

ORACLE

CAN BE PROUD OF: The software mogul’s sailing

team captured the America’s Cup in February,

achieving the first U.S. victory since 1992, at a cost

of hundreds of millions of dollars drawn from the

third-biggest American fortune after Bill Gates’s and

Warren Buffett’s—all three of whom have pledged,

along with 37 other billionaires, to give at least half

of their fortunes to charity.

SWORN ENEMY: Jonathan Schwartz gained

notoriety as one of the first C.E.O. bloggers (an

uncommonly good one, too) before Ellison, who

topped The Wall Street Journal’s list of highest-paid C.E.O.’s of the decade, collecting

$1.84 billion, acquired Schwartz’s struggling company, Sun Microsystems, and began

dissing him in the press, saying, “Lots and lots of blogs does not replace lots and lots of

sales.” Schwartz later announced his resignation on Twitter.

Photograph courtesy Oracle.

EVAN WILLIAMS and BIZ STONE

TWITTER

HERE TO STAY AFTER ALL? The enormously

popular microblogging service has signed up an

astonishing 124 million registered users (increasing

by 300,000 a day). People “tweet” more than one

billion times a month and search Twitter over 800

million times a day.

NOT SO FAST: Critics were underwhelmed when

Twitter revealed its moneymaking plans in April:

charging companies such as Starbucks and Sony

Pictures for “promoted tweets,” otherwise known as

ads.

Photographs by Joi I to.

JOHN MALONE

LIBERTY MEDIA

BUSINESS AS USUAL: Malone’s Colorado-based

media octopus has tentacles into Starz, Sirius XM

Radio, Live Nation, QVC, and Expedia, and has been

seizing cable companies around the world through

its subsidiary Liberty Global. In June, he left the

board of DirecTV, reducing his stake in the satellite

broadcaster to 3 percent. The ostensible reason was

to comply with a regulatory ruling that DirecTV

would otherwise have to divest its operations in

Puerto Rico. Malone’s gain on the deal: $162

million.

EVIDENCE OF POSSIBLY PARANOID BEHAVIOR: Fretting over the U.S.

economy, Malone’s wife moved all of her personal cash to Australia and Canada. The

couple maintains a getaway in Quebec near the Maine border, which they could reach via



snowmobile.

Photograph courtesy Liberty Media.

WARREN BUFFETT

BERKSHIRE HATHAWAY

SHOULD BE EMBARRASSED ABOUT: His

staunch defense of Goldman Sachs. Granted, he

does own a significant block of the investment

bank’s stock, but the Sage of Omaha sounds far

from oracular arguing (over and over) that

Goldman’s motive in the mortgage mess was

entirely pure. That said, it’s hard to criticize the man

who injected billions of his own capital into the

market when it was most desperately needed.

GENE POOL: According to Ancestry.com, Barack

Obama and Buffett are blood relatives. The

president’s ninth great-grandfather—and Buffett’s sixth great-grandfather—is French

immigrant Mareen Duvall.

Photograph by Mark Hirschey.

BRAD BIRD, PETE DOCTER, JOHN

LASSETER, and ANDREW STANTON

PIXAR, DISNEY

STAGE OF GLOBAL CONQUEST: Pixar’s

unmatched winning streak Continues. Coming 15

years after the original, Toy Story 3 grossed more

than $630 million worldwide in its first month and

reduced theaters full of adults to tears. Up next: the

Stanton-directed John Carter of Mars.

SYNERGY WATCH: As Disney’s chief creative

officer, Lasseter has tried to sprinkle “Pixar dust” on

numerous Disney projects, including The Princess

and the Frog and a set of Tinker Bell direct-to-video

releases, but so far nothing has reached the level of success and acclaim of Pixar’s releases.

Photographs by Patrick McMullan Co.

JEFF BEWKES

TIME WARNER

CAN BE PROUD OF: After spinning off AOL and

Time Warner’s cable businesses, Bewkes has

repositioned the company as a streamlined

entertainment giant, with more than half its profits

coming from television channels and programming

—a business he grew up in as the longtime chief of

money-printing and award-winning HBO. The

company flourished during the recession and is

outperforming industry rivals.

CORPORATE SIGNATURE: Having lived

through the darkness that was AOL—Time Warner,

Bewkes has been cautious about making any big media deals. The company passed on the

Weather Channel but submitted a $1.5 billion bid for MGM.


BOB IGER

DISNEY

FLYING HIGH: Presiding over what is now the



world’s biggest media company based on market

capitalization—$65 billion—Iger used Disney’s heft

to buy superhero-film factory Marvel

Entertainment, played hardball with cable operators

Cablevision and Time Warner Cable over rate

increases for his ESPN and other channels, and off-

loaded the once great Miramax independent movie

studio as he refocuses the company on Disney-

branded blockbusters such as Alice in Wonderland

and Pixar’s perennial masterpieces, most recently

Toy Story 3.

FAMILY RELATIONS: When Disney blacked out the first few minutes of the Oscars

telecast on ABC during a dispute with Long Island cable operator Cablevision, Iger, who

was born there, had to field complaints from his family.


LARRY FINK

BLACKROCK

STAGE OF GLOBAL CONQUEST: With $3.3

trillion in assets under management, BlackRock is

the world’s largest money manager. Revenues in the

company’s latest quarter were $2 billion—double

2009 levels—reflecting BlackRock’s increased

dominance since the purchase last December of

Barclays Global Investors.

BIG LOSS: In January, BlackRock and investment

partner Tishman Speyer were forced to hand New

York’s Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village

over to creditors, in the process watching a $5.4

billion investment go down the drain.

Photograph by Nigel Parry.

RALPH LAUREN

POLO RALPH LAUREN

IMPERIAL EXPANSION: Nestled within his

new, 23,000-square-foot Paris flagship is Ralph’s,

the designer’s American-themed restaurant. The see-

and-be-seen place has served a Who’s Who of

politicians (Jacques Chirac), royalty (King Albert II

of Belgium), and movie stars (Catherine Deneuve).

And the beef comes from Lauren’s own Colorado

ranch.

EMPLOYEE RELATIONS: A class action filed by

6,700 former Polo workers in California against the

company, alleging unpaid, off-the-clock labor, went

to court in March. The company didn’t admit liability, but agreed on a settlement only

weeks later for $4 million.


FRANÇOIS-HENRI PINAULT

PPR

CAN BE PROUD OF: Pinault is remaking his

family’s empire with his own vision—selling off

assets so he can spend freely to acquire even more

luxury labels for his Gucci Group (Balenciaga,

Bottega Veneta, Stella McCartney). PPR will reap as



much as $6 billion when it sells off its European

retail operations.

SPOUSAL RELATIONS: Wife Salma Hayek

Pinault, an impassioned environmentalist, got him

to drive a hybrid instead of an Aston Martin.


JONATHAN IVE

APPLE

MARK OF SUCCESS: “Jony” is the genius behind

that other genius at Apple. The latest device that

they created together, the iPad, is actually living up

to Steve Jobs’s claim that it’s yet another

revolutionary product.

LEGEND HAS IT: Ive left the design firm

Tangerine to join Apple shortly after his client Ideal

Standard rejected his designs for a new toilet.


MICKEY

DREXLER

J. CREW

EVIDENCE

OF

POSSIBLY

CONTRADICTORY BEHAVIOR: Although Drexler has said he doesn’t see J. Crew

expanding internationally, this spring he partnered with luxury online e-tailer Net-a-

Porter, a site that peddles designer goods in more than 150 countries, leading to

speculation that he is testing the waters overseas. (The company is also scouting real

estate in Canada.)

SYNERGY WATCH: Drexler has been stocking his stores with not only J. Crew

merchandise but also well-known long-standing brands: Sperry Top-Sider, Belstaff,

Timex, and Red Wing. It could be brilliant retailing or simply riding this year’s heritage

trend. Or both.


JOHNNY DEPP

ACTOR

STAB AT IMMORTALITY: Hollywood’s hottest

star—and the only one ever to appear in two films to

gross $1 billion (Pirates of the Caribbean 2, Alice in

Wonderland)—was paid a princely $20 million for

the upcoming drama The Tourist, co-starring

Angelina Jolie. But that’s nothing compared with

the extraordinary payday he’ll reap from the fourth

Pirates movie. Industry sources say the versatile

actor will collect a record $35 million by the time

filming is wrapped.

REAL-WIFE DRAMA: Vanessa Paradis, his



longtime partner (and mother of his two children), was said to have urged Depp to drop

out of making The Tourist once she learned that he would be filming a protracted love

scene with famed temptress Jolie.


BRIAN ROBERTS

COMCAST

STROKE OF LUCK: Roberts’s timing on

acquiring NBC Universal is looking better and

better, with NBC ad sales up 20 percent over the

previous year and Universal’s box office improving

as the deal’s close approaches. The merger caps an

epic empire-building effort by Roberts and his 90-

year-old father, Ralph. The $30 billion question in

buying NBCU: whether Roberts will be able to make

owning content and distribution—a bit of a 90s

conceit—pay off.

JOCULARITY TEST: Adjusting to the likely

mocking of Comcast next season on NBC’s 30 Rock, whose parent company happens to

have been acquired by “Kabletown.”

Photograph courtesy Comcast.

JEFFREY KATZENBERG

DREAMWORKS ANIMATION

THEATER OF OPERATIONS: Although

DreamWorks posted respectable gains in both

revenue and profits in 2009, the stock is down

nearly 30 percent. But that’s likely to change once

the final numbers come in for How to Train Your

Dragon and the last installment from the Shrek

franchise. While the former got off to a slow start, it

ended up earning more than $475 million

worldwide—enough for Katzenberg to declare the

movie the company’s next big franchise.

iLOVE: So enthralled is Katzenberg by his new iPad

that, at The Wall Street Journal’s All Things Digital conference, he declared, “The laptop is

yesterday’s news.”


LADY GAGA

SINGER

STAGE OF GLOBAL CONQUEST: She shoots a

video about a scantily clad convict—and fills it with

numerous product placements (Miracle Whip,

Polaroid). She intrigues professors as they parse

postmodern culture. She inspires surging sales for

slinky “shapewear” (think Spanx). Gaga is living out

the title of her debut album, The Fame (more than

10 million copies sold), hogging headlines whether

she’s flipping the bird at a Mets game or wearing a

red fetish costume as she meets Queen Elizabeth. All

the while her fans stream her videos tens of millions

of times and await her updates on Facebook and

Twitter.

PROFOUND AVERSION: Pants.




RONALD PERELMAN

MacANDREWS & FORBES

YEAR’S BEST MOVE: When long-suffering

shareholders of Revlon finally decided to throw in

the towel last fall and exchange their common stock

for preferred shares, in the process loosening terms

on some Revlon debt held by Perelman’s

MacAndrews & Forbes, they should have wondered

what Perelman wanted with shares that had been

dead in the water for three years. Less than a month

after the exchange, Revlon reported outsize third-

quarter results, sending the stock from under $6 to

nearly $20. Perelman wins again.

FAMILY RELATIONS: In a largely civic-minded move, in April, Perelman teamed up

with his businessman father, Ray, to bid for Philadelphia Newspapers—the bankrupt

owner of The Philadelphia Inquirer, Daily News, and Philly.com. They lost out to the

company’s lenders.


TOM HANKS

ACTOR, DIRECTOR, PRODUCER

A YEAR IN THE LIFE OF HOLLYWOOD’S

EVERYMAN: Hanks secured his position as

America’s most influential popular historian with

the March debut of the 10-part, $200 million HBO

mini-series The Pacific, the second of the World War

II epics that he created with Steven Spielberg. He

reprised his role as the voice of Woody for Toy Story

3 (earning $15 million) and planned what he

anticipates will be a controversial series on the J.F.K.

assassination. And this spring he returned to film

directing after a 14-year hiatus, shooting himself

and Julia Roberts in the upcoming Larry Crowne.

MOGUL RELATIONS: Spielberg scrapped his effort to remake Harvey when he

reportedly couldn’t persuade Hanks to star in the role made famous by Jimmy Stewart.


BILL KELLER

THE NEW YORK TIMES

BIG MOVES: As his boss, Arthur Sulzberger Jr.,

has been grappling with the paper’s financial crisis,

the unflappable Keller has been a steady hand at the

Times: changing the top editors in some key slots,

and giving his newsroom second-in-command, Jill

Abramson, a six-month assignment to focus on

digital initiatives, including the implementation of a

pay-wall system that’s to be introduced early next

year.

ARCH-ENEMY: Australian-born Wall Street

Journal editor Robert Thomson, who skewers the

Times at every opportunity.


ROBERT THOMSON

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL



BIG BOLD MOVES: When Thomson took over

The Wall Street Journal two years ago he injected

the paper with his own dose of market turmoil. He

expanded its international reportage, launched a

much-trumpeted New York metro section (which so

far seems tinny) and a glossy weekend magazine,

and pushed his reporters to cover topics the Journal

had all but ignored, including sports and culture.

The result: while the nation’s big-city newspapers

experienced an overall decline, the Journal’s paid

readership grew. Its two-million-plus circulation

now tops that of USA Today, making it the biggest

paper in the country.

FASHION ACCESSORY: Skinny ties, “for environmental reasons; they emit less

carbon.”


DAN DOCTOROFF

BLOOMBERG L.P.

STAGE OF GLOBAL CONQUEST: Last fall,

Bloomberg, which has been making high-profile

acquisitions and investing heavily in new products—

the complete opposite of just about every other

media company—picked up BusinessWeek at a fire-

sale price of $5 million, giving it access to the

magazine’s 900,000 subscribers and its 11 million

monthly Web visitors. With 2,300 journalists

working from 146 bureaus around the world,

Bloomberg’s news staff is now bigger than those of

The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times

combined.

DUBIOUS-ACHIEVEMENT AWARD: The Bloomberg president has made

consecutive appearances on Gotham magazine’s list of the best-dressed people in New

York: “A complete joke, because I own four suits and two pairs of shoes.”


JON STEWART

THE DAILY SHOW

SPHERE OF INFLUENCE: Stewart’s The Daily

Show (and spin-off The Colbert Report), on Comedy

Central, draws the lowest median age of male

viewers in the elusive 18-to-34 demographic than

any of the late-night network shows. The two shows

also have a cult following on the Internet, and while

ranked as among the most watched series on Hulu,

Viacom pulled them off the free video-streaming site

earlier this year.

POSSIBLE LAPSE IN JUDGMENT: Wearing

skintight black pants for his surprise appearance

onstage in Conan O’Brien’s comedy show at Radio City Music Hall in June.


JAMIE DIMON

J. P. MORGAN CHASE

CAN BE PROUD OF: While the competition has

been busy retrenching or fighting off prosecutions,



Dimon’s firm has added firepower across the board—

in retail banking, asset management, investment

banking, and even credit cards. Still, any hopes

Dimon may have had of using his popularity with

President Obama to soften regulatory reform were

blown away in the winds of populist protest.

MARITAL RELATIONS: Perhaps not

understanding the precise definition of the term,

Dimon referred to his wife of 27 years as a “cougar”

during a Robin Hood Foundation benefit he co-chaired in May.


CARLOS SLIM HELÚ

AMÉRICA MÓVIL

LIFE OF BRIAN MOMENT: When Slim’s New

York Times investment made him the paper’s

biggest shareholder not named Sulzberger and the

New York Post labeled him (correctly) “a savior,” a

Times flack called the tabloid and crucified the

messianic reference: “The correct way to refer to Mr.

Slim is that he is a shareholder.”

MAN NOT SO MUCH OF THE PEOPLE: Slim

dominates the Mexican economy, controlling some

200 companies that account for roughly one-third

of the country’s stock-market index. On average,

ordinary Mexicans earn just $13,500 a year—less than 0.0000003 percent of Slim’s

formidable fortune, the biggest in the world.


GEORGE BODENHEIMER

ESPN, ABC SPORTS

CAN BE PROUD OF: The sports network and its

various iterations (magazine, online, mobile,

restaurants) is a money machine for majority owner

Disney, extracting the highest fee of any channel

from cable companies. Bodenheimer’s latest coup:

the World Cup. All the various ESPN online and

mobile outlets that carried the competition racked

up a total of 4.9 billion minutes of usage for World

Cup content.

NOW IT CAN BE TOLD: Sarah Palin—who

aspired to be a sportscaster as a kid—named

daughter Bristol in part after Bristol, Connecticut, where ESPN is headquartered.


RICHARD PLEPLER, SUE NAEGLE, and

MICHAEL LOMBARDO

HBO

BRAGGING RIGHTS: With 101 prime-time

Emmy nominations, HBO’s dominance of quality

television remains unchallenged. The creative

triumvirate at the network is pretty much on speed

dial with top talent—such as Martin Scorsese, whose

first-ever TV series, Boardwalk Empire, debuts in

September. With the hit shows True Blood and

Entourage, and promising newcomers such as



Bored to Death, the division delivers close to $1.2

billion in annual profit to parent Time Warner’s

coffers.

EVIDENCE OF POSSIBLY TOO MUCH SUCCESS: HBO paid Hollywood blogger

Nikki Finke so that she would not sue over its new show Tilda, starring Diane Keaton as a

cantankerous Hollywood blogger.


OPRAH WINFREY

HARPO PRODUCTIONS

GRAND AMBITION: After 25 years of tears,

cheers, and occasional couch jumping, the queen of

daytime TV will now try to conquer the world of

prime time with her forthcoming show, Oprah’s

Next Chapter, an hour-long program that will

undoubtedly serve as the cornerstone of OWN: The

Oprah Winfrey Network, her new venture with

Discovery Communications that will launch in

January.


BONO

SINGER,

HUMANITARIAN

BUMP IN THE ROAD: In May, U2 was on track to break the record for the top-

grossing tour ever when Bono was sidelined for emergency spinal surgery. The 360

Degrees Tour, reputedly the most expensive rock tour in history—costing $750,000 a day

—pulled in $311 million, making it the year’s top draw.

NEMESIS: Popular financial-news Web site 24/7 Wall Street called Bono “the worst

investor in America” for his Silicon Valley venture-capital firm Elevation Partners’

“disastrous” bets on companies such as Forbes and Palm.


JAMES CAMERON

LIGHTSTORM ENTERTAINMENT

STAGE OF GLOBAL CONQUEST: With Avatar,

Cameron once again is feeling on top of the world.

His groundbreaking 3-D film brought in a record

$2.7 billion. Sure, he ran over budget to the tune of

$100 million, but his revolutionary camerawork will

forever change the way movies are made.


SHERYL

SANDBERG



FACEBOOK

MOGUL

RELATIONS: As Facebook’s C.O.O., Sandberg is the adult antidote to the youthful

exuberance of company founder Mark Zuckerberg. They’re technology’s odd couple, but

their partnership appears to be working. Reports in June put the company’s 2009 revenue

at $800 million, far more than expected.

SHOULD BE ASHAMED ABOUT: By forcing users to jump through complicated

hoops to “opt out” of the sharing of online usage data—as opposed to having us “opt in”—

Facebook has recently replaced Google as the bogeyman of online privacy.

Photograph by Kimberly White/Bloomberg/Getty Images.

STEVE BURKE

COMCAST

FUTURE MOVES: It’s likely that once Comcast

acquires the majority of NBC Universal—which will

vastly expand the nation’s largest cable operator into

a force in programming (that, as C.O.O., he will

oversee)—there will be big changes at the

entertainment company, including investing in

network TV in a way current owner General Electric

has not.

SUMMERTIME CENTER OF GRAVITY:

Burke and his family spent the July 4 weekend at

their house in Montana, with his close friend J. P.

Morgan Chase C.E.O. Jamie Dimon (on whose board Burke serves).


KARL LAGERFELD

CHANEL, FENDI, KARL LAGERFELD SAS

ONE DESIGNER LEFT BEHIND: Lagerfeld, the

renowned creative director at Chanel and Fendi, was

left hanging in March when his eponymous label,

which was purchased by Apax-owned Tommy

Hilfiger in 2005, was not part of Phillips—Van

Heusen’s $3 billion acquisition of the Hilfiger brand.

Since then, Apax has been revamping Lagerfeld’s

management team, likely in preparation for an

eventual sale.

NEMESIS: French actress Audrey Tautou, who

starred in Chanel No. 5 ads and played Coco in last

year’s Coco Before Chanel. When asked if she wears Chanel, Tautou said, “Sometimes.

This morning, I wore the rain boots.” To which Lagerfeld replied, “I didn’t even know we

made rain boots. After that, I don’t have to be nice.”


BARRY DILLER and DIANE VON

FURSTENBERG



IAC, DVF

BIG DEAL: The merger of Live Nation and Diller’s

Ticketmaster Entertainment to form Live Nation

Entertainment was finally completed, though a

tough 2010 concert season is putting pressure on the

newly combined mega-firm’s results. Meanwhile,

von Furstenberg, through the Council of Fashion

Designers of America, of which she is president,

raised $1 million for Haiti.

THORN IN HIS SIDE: IAC’s search division

(including Ask and Citysearch), the value of which

the company wrote down by $992 million in 2009. Diller tried to sell the fourth-ranked

Ask last year, but no deal was done. He says it’s currently not for sale.


RYAN KAVANAUGH

RELATIVITY MEDIA

WHEN CASH IS KING: The Hollywood

wunderkind is in the midst of putting up billions

(he’s raised $10 billion over six years) to help keep

Universal and Sony cranking out pictures through

2015. His company’s name is attached to 29 films

this year alone, including MacGruber, Get Him to

the Greek, Salt, and Little Fockers.

BIG MOVE: In July, he announced a deal with

Netflix that will make all Relativity Mediacontrolled

films (25 to 30 a year) available for streaming.


ARIANNA HUFFINGTON

THE HUFFINGTON POST

STAGE OF GLOBAL CONQUEST: What began

as a blog for liberal kvetching by her glam friends

has evolved into a bona fide news organization with

a paid staff of 70 reporters and editors and an

investigative fund. In May, HuffPo, which,

according to Nielsen, draws as many as 13 million

unique visitors a month, hosted its first table at the

White House Correspondents’ Dinner, taking its

place among long-established news organizations.


MATTHEW

WEINER,

JANIE

BRYANT,

and AMY

WELLS

MAD MEN

SPHERE OF

INFLUENCE: The stylish 60s ad-agency drama enjoys the most upscale audience of any



TV show, and its cultural influence, driven by creator Weiner, costume designer Bryant,

and set decorator Wells, is pervasive: it has been parodied on The Simpsons and celebrated

with its own Jeopardy! category, Oprah episode, Bloomingdale’s store window, and even

Barbie and Ken dolls.

Photograph by Patrick McMullan Co. (Weiner, Bryant) and Bill Kelly (Wells).

MARK PINCUS

ZYNGA

THEATER OF OPERATIONS: Pincus used

Facebook as a launching pad for his now

ridiculously popular “social games,” such as

Farmville, Mafia Wars, and Fishville. More people

play Farmville, a virtual agribusiness (83 million),

than any other computer game. With more than

200 million people playing all Zynga games, he’s

getting even more social, linking up with the likes of

Yahoo and the iPhone, among others. One recent

estimate of Zynga’s value: $5 billion.


TED FORSTMANN

IMG WORLDWIDE

BIG GUTSY MOVES: Already the dominant

sports agency in the U.S., Forstmann’s IMG lately

has been looking abroad for new business. In 2008,

IMG signed an agreement with China’s national

television broadcaster to produce an extensive slate

of sports programming. This March, the company

struck a similar deal with the indian billionaire

Mukesh Ambani.


STEVE

BALLMER

MICROSOFT

LEGACY

WATCH: In

the decade

since Ballmer

took over from

buddy Bill

Gates as

Microsoft’s

C.E.O., the

company’s

annual

revenue has nearly tripled, to $58 billion. But it has also lost nearly half its stock-market

value, while rival Apple’s value rose over 500 percent—and eclipsed Microsoft’s in May.

BROKEN CRYSTAL BALL: Three years ago Ballmer proclaimed, “There’s no chance

that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance.” (The iPhone is

now the No. 2 smartphone, with a 28 percent market share.)


SEAN PARKER

INTERNET ENTREPRENEUR

STAGE OF GLOBAL CONQUEST: The 30-year-

old self-taught computer whiz is considered by



many to be an oracle of the Web, one who knows

how to integrate the computer and online networks

into people’s lives. At 19 he helped Shawn Fanning

create Napster, the file-sharing service that

fundamentally changed the music business. He also

played an instrumental role in the launch of Mark

Zuckerberg’s Facebook.


JASON

KILAR

HULU

MOGUL

BONA

FIDES: Last

December,

Hulu reached

the milestone

of serving one

billion videos a

month over

the Web.

Advertising

brought in $100 million last year, but when one of its key backers, Rupert Murdoch,

launched his fatwa against free content online, rumors flew that Hulu would start

charging viewers. Sure enough, in June, Kilar announced a $9.99-a-month service that

offers full seasons of TV shows and will play on various platforms early next year.


LORNE MICHAELS

SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE

HIGH POINT: The comedy impresario’s Saturday

Night Live’s 13 nominations at this year’s Emmy

Awards brought its total to 126 nominations over the

show’s 35-year run, eclipsing the previous record

held by E.R. Seven of those Emmy nods came for

the May 8, 2010, episode hosted by 88-year-old

Betty White after Michaels ultimately acceded to a

Facebook campaign by nearly a half-million of her

fans.

THE PRICE OF MOGULDOM: Plentiful

mentions in the New York Post, which wrote that

“the king of Saturday Night Live … is getting a tarnished crown” as “critics say the show

peaked in the last century,” and that Michaels’s protégé Conan O’Brien “bombed as the

Tonight host” and Michaels’s film version of S.N.L.’s “MacGruber” sketch proved to be a

“turkey” at the box office.


J. J. ABRAMS

WRITER, DIRECTOR, PRODUCER

FLYING HIGH: The nerdy, prolific Abrams,

behind the blockbusters Star Trek and Mission:

Impossible III, has been developing a mind-

boggling array of new projects inspired by

everything from Japanese toys (Micronauts) to

literary novels (he optioned Colum McCann’s

National Book Award winner, Let the Great World

Spin). His upcoming offerings include Undercovers,



a TV spy comedy debuting this fall on NBC, and

Mission: Impossible IV, with Tom Cruise.

WINDFALL PROFITS: Made $31 million last

year from the back-end earnings for Star Trek.


CHRIS MELEDANDRI

ILLUMINATION ENTERTAINMENT

BRAGGING RIGHTS: In its opening weekend,

Illumination’s Despicable Me exceeded box-office

expectations and recouped its relatively modest

production budget ($69 million) in its first week—

making it the envy of other studios. It was the first

release by the new animation company Meledandri

founded in 2007 with backing from Universal

Pictures. Before that, he had spent 13 years at Fox,

where he oversaw the purchase of the hot

computer-graphics house Blue Sky and the first two

installments of the successful Ice Age series.


TYLER PERRY

DIRECTOR, PRODUCER, ACTOR, WRITER

LATEST BID FOR IMMORTALITY: Five of

Perry’s nine movies have opened at No. 1. His 10th

film, an adaptation of the 1975 play For Colored

Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the

Rainbow Is Enuf, will premiere in January with a

cast that includes Janet Jackson and Whoopi

Goldberg.

SWORN ENEMY: Spike Lee likened Perry’s two

popular TBS sitcoms to “coonery and buffoonery.”

On 60 Minutes, Lee was quoted as having said, “I

see ads for Meet the Browns and House of Payne

and I’m scratching my head The image is troubling and it harkens back to Amos ’n’

Andy.”


MIKE ALLEN

POLITICO

SIGN OF OMNIPOTENCE: Washington power

brokers don’t arise from bed without first reading

Allen’s “Playbook,” a tip sheet that he sends out as

early as 5:30 A.M. in a private e-mail to 3,000

Washington insiders before it hits the Politico Web

site. He routinely breaks news and helps set the day’s

agenda for the rest of the media.

Photograph courtest Politico.

GRETCHEN



MORGENSON

THE NEW YORK TIMES

SPHERE OF INFLUENCE: Since joining the paper, in 1998—shortly before the

collapse of Long-Term Capital Management—the Pulitzer Prize winner has indefatigably

covered an endless procession of corporate scandal and miscreancy, from the failures of

WorldCom and Enron to the corrupt stock shilling of the Internet boom, to the overpaid

culprits who created the economic crisis we’re in today.

DIPLOMACY SKILLS: After being roughed up in one of Morgenson’s blistering

accounts of A.I.G.’s demise (some of which she co-wrote with Louise Story), Goldman

Sachs chief Lloyd Blankfein compared the experience to being “waterboarded.”

Photograph by Splash/Newscom.

RYAN MURPHY

GLEE

CAN BE PROUD OF: Murphy’s Glee attracts as

many as 11 million viewers a week with its joyous,

outrageous portrayals of a high-school glee club.

Fox ordered two more seasons as the show’s devoted

fan base turned out in force for a four-city tour, Glee

Live! In Concert!

SWORN ENEMY: Newsweek, which Murphy

condemned for publishing a “blatantly homophobic”

article criticizing the performance of openly gay

Broadway actor Jonathan Groff, who plays a

straight character on Glee.


MIUCCIA PRADA

PRADA S.P.A.

CLOUD OF UNCERTAINTY: Buoyed by 14

percent growth in its retail sector, the luxury

company negotiated a three-year loan of $454.8

million to help refinance its debt and continue

expanding its retail operations (30 store openings

this year).


DIEGO

DELLA

VALLE

TOD’S

RECESSION-DEFYING MOVE: The Italian luxury-goods mogul saw his company’s



earnings climb 3.5 percent last year, to $119 million. Meanwhile, he recorded a $44.5

million paper profit when the shares of Saks Inc. he had bought in early 2009 more than

doubled. Still bullish on Saks, he invested $52.5 million more, upping his stake from 5.9

percent to 9.4 percent.


JAY-Z

ROC NATION

BRAGGING RIGHTS: The 40-year-old hip-hop

legend generates nearly $1 billion in annual

revenues from his clothing line, music label, talent

agency, concerts, endorsements (HP, Budweiser),

nightclubs, and more. He’s had 11 albums reach No.

1, more than any other solo artist and second only to

the Beatles.

DUBIOUS EFFORT TO HAVE IT BOTH

WAYS: He called out his close colleague Kanye

West for his “rude” outburst during Taylor Swift’s

Video Music Award acceptance speech—but also

defended the “passion” that led the rapper to protest that Jay-Z’s wife, Beyoncé, deserved

the win.


HOWARD STRINGER

SONY CORP.

THE PRICE OF MOGULDOM: This year,

Stringer skipped the Sun Valley mogul retreat to

attend the final of the World Cup. Sony was one of

the contest’s biggest sponsors, using it as a platform

to trumpet a huge bet on 3-D as the future of

television. Stringer’s ongoing efforts to return the

Japanese electronics behemoth to its former glory

have been impeded by the recession, but a strong

first quarter is proof his plans are starting to gel.


JANN

WENNER

WENNER

MEDIA

STAGE OF

GLOBAL

CONQUEST:

When Rolling

Stone,

Wenner’s 43-

year-old

culture-and-

politics

fortnightly,

broke the story that broke the back of General Stanley McChrystal, many observers

wondered how a magazine more popularly associated with preening pop stars could have

landed such a scoop. They shouldn’t have. Fueled by two unpopular wars and a historic

economic collapse, Rolling Stone simply stuck to its roots, churning out a string of high-

caliber stories that have made the magazine consistently engaging.

SHOULD BE EMBARRASSED ABOUT: As the McChrystal story exploded across

every news outlet in the country, the article was nowhere to be found on Rolling Stone’s



own Web site, an absence that prompted some media critics to charge that Wenner still

doesn’t get how the Internet works.

Photograph by Neilson Barnard/Getty Images.

ANGELA AHRENDTS and CHRISTOPHER

BAILEY

BURBERRY

STAGE OF GLOBAL CONQUEST: The duo

transformed a stodgy British rainwear brand into a

fashion powerhouse as Bailey, the chief creative

officer, put his mark all over design, branding, and

advertising. American-born C.E.O. Ahrendts plans

to open as many as 30 new stores this year.

DIGITAL BONA FIDES: Bailey streamed last

February’s London runway show in 3-D to select

cities around the globe, while he also enabled

customers to view it live in 2-D on the Web and click

to buy items.


CHARLIE ROSE

CHARLIE ROSE

BIG SCOOP: White House chief of staff Rahm

Emanuel admitted on Rose’s show that he wants to

run for mayor of Chicago when the incumbent,

Richard Daley, decides to retire. Emanuel later

confessed that he never meant to be so revealing.

THE PRICE OF MOGULDOM: Last September,

Fortune probed the potential conflicts of interest

from Rose’s being his show’s own fund-raiser and

asked whether the influential TV host downplays his

close ties to Coca-Cola, his top sponsor.


TOM FRESTON

FIREFLY3

SPHERE OF INFLUENCE: Freston remains a

go-to media maven without actually running, or

wanting to run, a giant media business. Instead, he

acts as an adviser and connector, including sitting

on the boards of Bono’s One and (Red) ventures and

consulting for Oprah Winfrey’s OWN network. He’s

also on the board of DreamWorks Animation and

finds time to roam the corners of the earth.


LESLIE

MOONVES

CBS

MARK OF

SUCCESS:

Moonves is all

about getting

paid—he told

the tech turks

at this year’s



Sun Valley

conference

that content

creators such

as CBS need to be compensated for all the things people watch on gadgets, and has led the

charge for broadcast networks to be paid monthly fees by cable operators for the first time.

He rekindled talks with Time Warner chief Jeff Bewkes about combining CBS’s profit-

challenged news operation with ratings-challenged CNN. And, having made CBS the top-

rated network for seven of the past eight years, Moonves himself earned a handsome $43

million in 2009 (double his pay for 2008).

CLOUDY FUTURE: CBS Films’ first two releases, Extraordinary Measures and The

Back-up Plan, fizzled, and their titles could well describe what the division needs next.


DAVID ZASLAV

DISCOVERY COMMUNICATIONS

MOGUL BONA FIDES: In three years as C.E.O.,

Zaslav, who recently paid $25 million for Conan

O’Brien’s Central Park West duplex, has aggressively

turned earnest but sleepy Discovery

Communications, with its 13-channel U.S. portfolio

(Discovery, Animal Planet), into a programming

behemoth (Deadliest Catch, Planet Earth) that is

sure to hit new heights early next year with the

launch of the crazily anticipated Oprah Winfrey

Network (OWN), of which Discovery is part owner.


GEORGE CLOONEY

ACTOR, WRITER, DIRECTOR, PRODUCER,

ACTIVIST

CROWD-PLEASER: Clooney won the New York

Film Critics Circle award for best actor for his role in

Up in the Air, for which he commanded a $10

million fee, and for his vocal work in the animated

Fantastic Mr. Fox. And he enjoyed a surprising

windfall from his dark military comedy The Men

Who Stare at Goats, which grossed $44 million

worldwide and brought him $4.5 million in back-

end profits. In his role as Hollywood’s consummate

do-gooder, Clooney organized and hosted a two-

hour benefit concert, “Hope for Haiti Now,” which

raised $57 million.

ODDLY ENDEARING AND HUMANIZING EVIDENCE OF HAPLESS

KLUTZINESS: At his Italian villa last year, shut his car door on his hand and broke it.


PHILIPPE DAUMAN

VIACOM

ALL YOU NEED IS CALM: Last year was one of

relative stability at Viacom, where until recently the

day-to-day running of the fourth-largest media

conglomerate was overshadowed by Dauman’s boss

Sumner Redstone’s personal and financial turmoil.

Iron Man 2 performed particularly well ($616

million worldwide) for Paramount. And this year,

with advertising rebounding and ratings up at key



cable networks (MTV, Nickelodeon, Comedy

Central), Viacom paid its first dividend ever.

BIG LOSS: A federal judge tossed out Viacom’s $1

billion lawsuit against YouTube and its owner, Google, for allegedly posting copyrighted

clips from Viacom’s cable channels without permission. Viacom is appealing.


JUDD APATOW

WRITER, DIRECTOR, PRODUCER

HOLLYWOOD HIGH: Despite the box-office

disappointment of Funny People last year,

Hollywood’s “Mayor of Comedy” was nonetheless

re-elected: Apatow signed a three-picture directing

deal with Universal. Meanwhile, the moderate

success of Apatow’s most recent undertaking as a

producer, Get Him to the Greek, proved the

continuing appeal of his patented brand of bromedy.

OCCUPATIONAL HAZARD: Now that Apatow’s

mafia has virtually taken over comedy in

Hollywood, it’s becoming harder for each of their

new films to outdo the last one’s moments of outrageousness.


BILL GROSS

PIMCO

BIG BOLD BETS: With investors fleeing the stock

market in droves, many are finding refuge at Pimco,

Gross’s bond behemoth, which manages more than

$1 trillion of other people’s money. In 2008, while

the broader stock market dropped 38 percent,

Pimco’s flagship Total Return fund was up 4.3

percent. His biggest gamble: buying $200 billion

worth of distressed debt from Fannie Mae and

Freddie Mac. On the day the Treasury announced

that it would bail out the two mortgage giants,

Gross’s funds made a $2.5 billion profit.

BIG PURCHASE: Gross, the world’s foremost philatelist, traded four stamps for an 1868

one-cent stamp called the Z Grill, one of only two known to exist.

Photograph by Jonathan Alcorn/Zuma Press.

GAO XIQING

CHINA INVESTMENT CORPORATION

MAN-OF-THE-PEOPLE MOVE: A late-May

announcement by C.I.C. president Gao that the

$300 billion sovereign-wealth fund was not going to

reduce investments in Europe ignited a rally that

helped head off (for the moment) the sense that

Europe was going down the financial tubes.

WORLD-DOMINATION WATCH: As some

investors (and countries) scrounge for cash, C.I.C. is

buying big chunks of important companies in

critical industries. Last year, it purchased stakes in

Russia’s Nobel Oil Group and Canadian mining

outfit Teck Resources.

Photograph courtesy China Investment Corporation.



VINOD KHOSLA

KHOSLA VENTURES

BIG MOVES: Even with credit tight, Khosla was

able to raise $1.3 billion last year to seed two

different investment vehicles—a $1 billion fund

earmarked for clean-energy and information

technologies, and a $300 million fund that will

target high-risk, experimental projects. Among his

current investments: a suburban-Detroit-based

manufacturer of fuel-efficient internal-combustion

engines (EcoMotors), an LED lighting company

(Soraa), a solar-energy concern (Cogenra), and a

high-efficiency-cooling-system company (New

PAX). In May, Tony Blair, the former British prime

minister, joined Khosla’s venture-capital shop to serve as an adviser.

PET PEEVE: Greenwashing. “There’s a lot of this fashionable ‘Let’s go green!,’ especially

politicians spending other people’s money, to show that they can be greener than the next

guy.”

Photograph by James Duncan Davidson/O’Reilly Media, Inc.

BRIAN GRAZER and RON HOWARD

IMAGINE ENTERTAINMENT

SPHERE OF INFLUENCE: A whirlwind of

eclectic ideas, Grazer has a dizzying four dozen

movies in development and a half-dozen more in

various stages of production. His fourth Russell

Crowe picture, Robin Hood, captured $310 million

in global box-office receipts, and he’s got a surefire

success in his upcoming The Dilemma, a Vince

Vaughn comedy directed by his longtime business

partner, Howard, who this year turned his 1989 hit

film, Parenthood, into a hit TV series for NBC.

Howard also moonlighted making short videos for

the Web site Funny or Die that were comedic, star-

studded lobbying efforts for creating the Consumer Financial Protection Agency.


TADASHI YANAI

UNIQLO

STAGE OF GLOBAL CONQUEST: Japan’s

richest person, Yanai has built a $9 billion fortune

(up $3 billion last year alone) from his apparel chain

Fast Retailing—and he aspires to surpass Gap,

Sweden’s H&M, and Spain’s Inditex (owner of Zara)

to become the world’s top clothing retailer. His

Uniqlo stores sold more than 400 million items last

year and have already conquered New York,

London, Paris, and Moscow. He plans to open 200

more stores across Asia by 2012.

DODGED A BULLET WHEN: In 2007 he lost

out in his $950 million bid to buy Barneys New York. Less than two years later, the store’s

value had been reportedly halved.

Photograph courtesy SoftBank.

JEFF SKOLL

PARTICIPANT MEDIA



CREATIVE CREDENTIALS: The eBay

billionaire has cut a wide swath through film with

his Participant Media. The for-profit entertainment

company with a social-action angle bankrolled four

documentaries at Sundance, including Davis

Guggenheim’s harrowing Waiting for Superman,

about the U.S. public-education system. But more

than financing projects, Participant’s trademark has

been its message marketing, various outreach

programs that allow its films—such as the Oscar-

winning The Cove and the upcoming Countdown to

Zero—to have an impact.

PIPE DREAM: The Skoll Global Threats Fund, headed by former Google philanthropy

chief Larry Brilliant, aims for the elimination of all nuclear weapons and for a peaceful

resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.


ANGELINA JOLIE and BRAD PITT

ACTORS, HUMANITARIANS

STAGE OF GLOBAL CONQUEST: When a

couple is so enviably adept at balancing work and

family that they can take turns making big movies

(she received $20 million for Salt, and he’s been

working on Moneyball) and hanging with the kids

(he took them crabbing in Venice while she shot The

Tourist, with Johnny Depp), then they can expect

Schadenfreude of the highest degree.

LATEST ACTS OF DO-GOODERY: After the

devastating earthquake in Haiti in January, their

foundation gave $1 million to Doctors Without

Borders for emergency medical response.


DAVID TEPPER

APPALOOSA MANAGEMENT

BIG GUTSY MOVES: Last year, when few people

dared to brave the world’s equity markets, Tepper

went all in, loading up on beaten-down bank stocks

that nobody would touch. Among his prescient calls:

investing heavily in Citigroup (at an average price of

79 cents a share) and Bank of America. The result: a

130 percent return, a performance that netted the

53-year-old a record $4 billion. This year, the

investor is setting his sights on the airlines.

Photograph courtesy David Tepper.

FRANK

RICH

THE NEW

YORK TIMES

SPHERE OF



INFLUENCE: “The enigmatic aspects of Obama make him an endlessly fascinating

protagonist,” says the op-ed columnist. Rich’s virtuosic 1,500-word weekly Times column

has portrayed what he describes as “a new administration still coping with an unrecovered

economy (for most Americans), the bleeding ulcer (and that’s the optimistic diagnosis) of

Afghanistan and a political opposition that vehemently, if not nihilistically, combats its

every move.”


MATT BLANK

SHOWTIME

CLOUDY FUTURE: Blank’s longtime deputy,

Robert Greenblatt, the force behind many of the pay

channel’s recent original-series successes—Weeds,

Dexter, and Nurse Jackie—stepped down in July.

The personnel change comes just as Showtime

adjusts to the loss of three big suppliers of movies

and as competition with HBO is getting tougher and

up-and-coming Starz has hired former HBO head

Chris Albrecht to raise its game. To replenish

Showtime’s pipeline, Blank brokered distribution

deals with Summit, the Weinstein Company, sibling

CBS Films, and DreamWorks Studios.


VIVI NEVO

NV INVESTMENTS

MOGUL RELATIONS: Nevo continues to be a

behind-the-scenes investor in media and technology

companies. He’s a backer of Richard Rosenblatt’s

Demand Media and an investor in Twitter founder

Jack Dorsey’s Square, and has handed over an

undisclosed portion of his fortune to angel investor

Ron Conway.


MARISSA

MAYER

GOOGLE

SPHERE OF

INFLUENCE: Mayer, Google’s first female engineer, must vet nearly every proposed

change to company properties. The 35-year-old has overseen the development of Gmail,

Google Maps, and Google News, making her one of the most influential arbiters of how

we experience the Web. Her latest effort: redesigning Google’s all-important search-results

page, giving visitors the ability to peruse video, images, and more.


SETH MacFARLANE



WRITER

STAGE OF GLOBAL CONQUEST: MacFarlane

is the highest-paid TV writer and producer in history

(a $100 million contract with Fox), and his Family

Guy has sold more DVDs than any other seasonal

TV franchise (more than 22 million combined

units). In 2008 he launched his own YouTube

cartoon comedy channel, and now he’s expanding

into film with his live-action C.G.I. hybrid, Ted,

about a man and his teddy bear.

BOLD STATEMENT: Compared Arizona’s anti-

immigration law to Nazi Germany’s racism:

“Nobody but the Nazis ever asked anybody for their papers.… I think they should be

required to ask that question in German if the law sticks around.”


MICHAEL MORITZ

SEQUOIA CAPITAL

LATEST BIG MOVES: The challenged economy

put a crimp on much of the world’s money flow, but

it hasn’t slowed Moritz. Flush with cash, the venture

capitalist is backing new enterprises in India

(Indecomm Global), China (social-networker

Comsenz), and Europe (online-payments company

Klarna).

Photograph by Soumik Kar/The India Times/Getty Images.

MARC

JACOBS

MARC

JACOBS

INTERNATIONAL, LOUIS VUITTON

BIG MOVES: Since 2008, Jacobs’s company has been racking up record financial

results, thanks to diversification and expansion in China and Brazil. Meanwhile, at Louis

Vuitton, where he is creative director, the luxury label increased its revenue by double

digits in 2009.

EVIDENCE OF POSSIBLE OVEREXPOSURE: The print ad for his new Marc

Jacobs men’s scent, Bang, features the designer nude on a Mylar bed with only a

fragrance bottle for coverage.


WILLIAM McDONOUGH

ARCHITECT

STAGE OF GLOBAL CONQUEST: Named by

Design Intelligence the No. 1 “role model” for

sustainability, McDonough crusades with an

uncompromising environmental credo—he believes



in re-using just about everything—and has inspired

some of the highest-profile green projects of our

time, including his big cool buddy Brad Pitt’s Make

It Right houses in New Orleans’s Lower Ninth

Ward.


CRAIG

VENTER

SYNTHETIC

GENOMICS

WORLD-

DOMINATION WATCH: The human-DNA decoder created the first synthetic life-form

by manufacturing a new genome and injecting it into another cell. By manipulating the

DNA of simple organisms, the geneticist plans to engineer algae that can produce usable

fuel. ExxonMobil is giving him $300 million to help fund his next-generation biofuel

efforts.


LARRY GAGOSIAN

GAGOSIAN GALLERY

IMPERIAL EXPANSION: The powerful art

dealer impressed critics with museum-quality

exhibitions of late works by Monet at his New York

gallery, in which nothing was for sale. “Gogo”

opened an Athens gallery last year, expanded his

Beverly Hills space, and debuted a storefront on

Madison Avenue to sell prints, posters, and limited-

edition works.


ANDREW

WYLIE

THE WYLIE

AGENCY

SPHERE OF

INFLUENCE: One of the most powerful forces in book publishing (the others being Jeff

Bezos and Steve Jobs) represents more than 700 clients, including contemporary writers

such as Salman Rushdie and Philip Roth (as well as the editor of this magazine), business

luminaries (Larry Ellison, David Rockefeller), and the estates of literary giants like

Norman Mailer, Vladimir Nabokov, and John Updike. His basic operating tenet: if a

publisher recoups the big advances Wylie lands his writers, he didn’t ask for enough



money.

WORLD-DOMINATION WATCH: In July, Wylie announced a deal with Amazon

that gives the online retailer exclusive digital rights to 20 backlist titles, including works by

Saul Bellow, Ralph Ellison, and Hunter S. Thompson. Critics say the deal will shortchange

writers by locking them out of popular e-reader services from Apple and Sony.


RICH GELFOND

IMAX

THEATER OF OPERATIONS: It wasn’t long

ago that the large-screen Imax format was looked

on as a novelty attraction relegated to museums and

theme parks. Not anymore. Thanks to a series of

bold strategic initiatives—and some major backing

from Hollywood—Imax’s business has exploded.

Fueled by James Cameron’s year-end breakout,

Avatar, the company posted record revenues in

2009 and turned its first profit in four years. Since

bottoming out, in November 2008, Imax shares are

up more than 500 percent.

TRUSTED ALLY: Paramount chief Brad Grey, who told the Los Angeles Times that

Imax “has become an almost essential part of releasing a blockbuster.”

Photograph by Patrick McMullan.

CHRIS ANDERSON

TED CONFERENCE

SPHERE OF INFLUENCE: The elite pay $6,000

apiece to attend Anderson’s invitation-only TED

Conference (for Technology, Entertainment, and

Design) every spring in Long Beach, California,

where they spend four days watching 50-plus

creative thinkers talk about their most provocative

ideas. Afterward, the rest of the world watches it

compulsively on the Web.

NEMESIS: Sarah Silverman, whose TED speech

was “god-awful,” he tweeted.


REED HASTINGS

NETFLIX

SPHERE OF INFLUENCE: Hastings has seen

his mail-order DVD-rental business soar in

dominance—it now has 15 million subscribers and is

worth more than $5 billion. Netflix has also led the

charge to stream movies directly over the Internet to

TVs, laptops, and gaming systems. More recently the

company partnered with Relativity Media’s Ryan

Kavanaugh to stream movies from Kavanaugh’s

deep film catalogue.

CLOUD OF UNCERTAINTY: Opinion is divided

on how well Netflix will be able to stave off

companies that want to steal bits of its business, from the studios that supply the movies

and TV shows it rents to gadget-makers such as Amazon and Apple.


JOHN GALLIANO



DIOR

BUSINESS AS USUAL: Dior’s creative director

designs more than 30 collections annually between

the fashion house and his label, John Galliano. This

year he added a men’s-wear line, Galliano, and his

new selection of scarves and hats debuts this fall.

CAN BE PROUD OF: In June, French president

Nicolas Sarkozy, whose wife, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy,

is Dior’s biggest fan, presented the couturier with the

Légion d’Honneur, France’s highest honor.


HARVEY and BOB WEINSTEIN

THE WEINSTEIN COMPANY

BIG FRUSTRATION: After months of hustling to

reclaim the name Miramax, as well as the library of

films they made under it, from former employer

Disney, the Weinsteins fell short in a bid with

financier Ron Burkle. The reasons were debatable,

but the challenged finances of the Weinstein

Company, which the brothers set up when they

departed Disney five years ago, could not have

helped. In June, however, the company finally re-

structured $450 million worth of debt, with

Goldman Sachs taking temporary ownership of as

many as 250 of its films.

CAN BE PROUD OF: Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, their first bona fide hit

in a while, reminded people that the brothers still have the touch.


NIKKI FINKE

DEADLINE HOLLYWOOD

CAN BE PROUD OF: Few people can escape her

poisonous epithets, be they high-ranking executives

(NBC’s Jeff Zucker has been called a “kiss-ass

incompetent”), journalistic peers (Variety editor

Peter Bart was dubbed Mike “Ovitz’s buttboy”), or

low-level studio publicists (“asswipe”). But her four-

year-old entertainment-business blog routinely

draws more readers than both the print and online

versions of her biggest competitors, Variety and The

Hollywood Reporter, and breaks more industry

news as well.

FIGHTIN’ WORDS: “If you stonewall me, if you lie to me, if you don’t give me the

information first—you will pay a price.”

JEAN PIGOZZI

INVESTOR, ART COLLECTOR

LENSMAN CHRONICLES: The fourth

monograph of Pigozzi’s long-running “visual diary,”

Catalogue Déraisonné, available now in the U.S.,

includes Pigozzi’s trademark intimate shots of major

celebrities.

GREEN PROPS: Pigozzi’s Liquid Jungle Lab is

focused on high-tech ecological research in Pacific



Panama. Plans are afoot to build a super-deluxe eco-

hotel on his Panama property.


CHRIS ALBRECHT

STARZ MEDIA

MOGUL COMEBACK: Since joining Starz earlier

this year, Albrecht has been working to make the

pay-TV channel a major player against rival HBO

(from which he was fired in 2007). His first success:

the mini-series The Pillars of the Earth. In addition

to ramping up original shows, he has also been busy

at Starz owner John Malone’s Liberty Media with

the shutting down of three-year-old Overture Films.

SMART-GUY MOVE: After Andy Whitfield, the

lead actor in Starz’s surprise hit series Spartacus:

Blood and Sand, was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s

lymphoma, Albrecht gave the go-ahead to a special six-part prequel series while Whitfield

underwent treatment.


TOM FORD

DESIGNER, FILMMAKER

STAGE OF GLOBAL CONQUEST: Ford’s return

to designing women’s fashion, expected with next

year’s fall collection, is hotly anticipated. Not that

he’s been idle since leaving Gucci: Ford launched his

own brand with forays into eyewear, beauty

products, and men’s wear. And he re-invented

himself as a Hollywood auteur by writing, directing,

and financing (with $7 million of his own cash) his

debut feature film, A Single Man, which earned a

best-actor Oscar nomination for Colin Firth and

brought in more than $23 million in worldwide box-

office receipts.

NOW IT CAN BE TOLD: Ford and the film’s distributor, the Weinstein Company, were

met with protest when they cut out a kiss between gay lovers.


RON CONWAY

SV ANGEL

BID FOR IMMORTALITY: Conway is

considered by many to be the single most important

angel investor in Silicon Valley. Among his notable

winners: Digg, Facebook, Google, Twitter, and

PayPal. In 2010 he launched a $20 million fund

that has invested in 50 fledgling tech firms,

including current Web darling Foursquare.

PAST LIFE: Conway began investing in Internet

companies in 1995, eventually raising $150 million

from a coterie of wealthy clients such as Tiger

Woods. He nearly lost it all in the tech crash of

2000, but was bailed out by two prescient calls: PayPal and Google.


WANG CHUANFU



Keywords

BUSINESS, THE NEW ESTABLISHMENT

BYD

WORLD-DOMINATION WATCH: Wang began

selling his first electric car in China last year. In

May, BYD announced plans to build its North

American headquarters in Los Angeles, in

preparation for the company’s foray into the U.S., in

2011. Add to that a deal with Daimler AG to develop

a new line of electric cars and it’s no wonder BYD’s

car business is now its biggest revenue generator.

MAN-OF-THE-PEOPLE MOVE: At the Detroit

auto show, Wang and his associates rented a house

in the suburbs rather than stay at an expensive

hotel.

Photograph by Robyn Beck/Getty Images.

ROB FRIEDMAN and PATRICK

WACHSBERGER

SUMMIT ENTERTAINMENT

BIG WIN: Armed with a $1 billion credit line from

Merrill Lynch (and a small equity infusion from

Jeffrey Skoll’s Participant Media), Friedman and

Wachsberger couldn’t have anticipated the rich vein

they would tap into with Twilight. To date, the three

Twilight movies have earned more than $1.7 billion

worldwide, a number that will likely double when

Summit releases the final two installments in the

years ahead.

PET PEEVE: Being labeled the studio that Twilight

built. Summit’s other hits: Knowing, which grossed $181 million worldwide, and The Hurt

Locker, winner of last year’s best-picture and best-director Oscars.

Photograph by Kevin Winter/Getty Images.

LLOYD BLANKFEIN

GOLDMAN SACHS

DODGED A BULLET WHEN: Goldman’s July

settlement with the S.E.C. over accusations of fraud

in the Abacus scandal was a paltry $550 million. Big

money to the rest of us but a mere 15 days’ worth of

profits for the Wall Street powerhouse the

population at large continues to love to hate.


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