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26

FeaturesCOVER STORY

.WEB WARS: GOOGLE TAltES ONEBAYTwo Web titans are on a collision course overbillions of dollars in revenue, millions of customers and selling the perfect word.By Anthony Effinger

3{ U.S. AIRLINES: BEYOND REPAIR Slack demand, management missteps andsour labor relations have cost the industry billions-with no solution in sight. .By Lor@n Steffy and Mary Schlangenstein

_~_6~-, PLAN ET VIRGIN As Richard Branson begins a new push to plant his logo aU over

the globe, he'Il have to convinee investors he's after profits as weIl as publicity.By Stephanie Baker-Said

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:~I:= A BILLIONAIRE'S BEST FRIEND Tarak Ben Ammar does deals with clients likeMurdoch, Alwaleed and Berlusconi-sometimes an at once.By Vernon silver

,.~{:-= RONALD COHEN'S AMERICAN DREAM Apax Partners, Europe's largest private

equity firm, is targeting the US. as competition builds on its home turf.

By Simon Clark and Randy Whitestene

:?:?::::i STANLEY HO'S HIGH.STAI(ES SHOWDDWN The Macau biUionaire faces compe-tition from US. casino operators. By William "elle.

':@::::i HOW TO GET HOLLY INTO HARVARD With more students than ever vying for ad-mission to top US. colleges, parents seeking an edge are hiring private consultants

who charge as much as $32,000. By Liz Willen

:~~:::J COMMERCE BANCORP: MORE MONEY, MORE QUESTIONS Investor concerns aboutaccounting practices and po1itical maneuvering have hammered the New Jersey

lender's stock priee. By Andrew Pratt

~ ---~

56

.1 ionaire'sTarak Ben Ammar do es dealswith clients like Murdoch,

Alwaleed and Berlusconi-sometimes aIl at once.

By Vernon SiLver

. Tarak Ben Ammar, an investment and mergers adviser tabillionaires, says two things have won him clients and madehim rich: connections and coincidence.

How did Ben Ammar gel Saudi Prince Ahvaleed bin TalaIas a client? Their parents are old friends; the Ben Ammar faro-ily album includes a snapshot of the prince at age 6. SilviaBerlusconi, Italy's richest man and prime minister? He hap-pened to be on vacation in Ben Ammar's native Tunisia whenthey met. Rupert Murdoch? He \Vas in MHan on related busi-

ness at the same thne as Ben Ammar. French investor VincentHolIoré? "Bolloré is my neighbor." says Ben Ammar. Bath menlive in villas in Paris's leafy 16th arrondissement, a wealthy res-idential neighborhood near the Arc de Triomphe, he says.

Such connections have led Ben Ammal', 54, to go fromproducing films in Tunisia to buHding a financial advisorybusiness that helped him amass a fortune of more than $100million. he says. The son of a diplomat, Ben Ammar usesthose relationships as his passport to a European financialworld dominated by family-held companies and Byzandnealliances that Wall Street investment banks often find hardto pene.trate. 'Tm an adviser to a few big boys who couldn'tsolve their problems through the big investment banks," BenAmmar says. "My l'ole is to say things to the prince and SiI-vio and Murdoch that they can't say to each other."

One of Ben Ammar's nex1:moves is to step up his challengeto Wall Street competitors by starting a small mergers in-vestment bank in partnership ,vith ABN Arnro Holding NV,the Netherlands' biggest bank by assets. Ben Ammar andABN Amro each own half of a company cal1ed Global Part-ners, which they formed to develop the new venture, he says.

Murdoch says Ben Ammar already has an edge over WallStreet, because he can bring together investors in business re-lationships that are also based on personalrapport. "Heknows more people than investment banks do," says the chair-man and chief executive of News Corp., which owns newspa-pers and television networks around the world. "lt's not hardto call up a big bank-they ail love your business-but some-one telling you who to trust?"

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-BILLIONAIRES' BROI<ERTarak Ben Ammar helped put together the folfowinginvestmentsand acquisitions fOr his rich clients.

r:-Company ]nvestor(s)/buyer(s) Value

(inbillions)~-~--',----_."_."---'-' ..r.' -$LOo-Silvia Berlusconi's Mediaset Prince Alwaleed, Leo I<jrch,Nethold

11999 .Kirch's KirchMedia A~i;d:Be-rl~;Zc;~i. 'L;h;;a7,B~th;;s." 1.30

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[~8 :;3l'J']:11 b ~ :'~,J:;? \J 1;", 'I1:J'~!' "?i)O~; TARAK BEN AMMAR

billion investment in KirehMedia GmbH by Lehman Broth-ers Holdings Ine., Alwaleed, Berlusconi and others.

This year, Ben Ammar stepped out of his familiarmedia world and into the hornet's nest of Italian banking,putting to the test his skills as a cross-cultural negotiator.

ln April, he won a compromise for Bolloré in the battle overItaly's biggest investmentbank, Mediobanca SpA, and

the insurance company itcontrols, Assicurazione Gen-erali SpA.

Bolloré-whose BolloréGroup makes most of itsmoney from shipping andpaper making-says he in-

creased his Mediobanca staketo 5 percent of the companyto preserve the job ofhis friendGenerali Chairman AntoineBernheim. ln exchange forkeeping Bernheim, Bolloré letMediobanca investors fromseveral Italian banks oustMediobanca Chief ExecutiveVincenzo Maranghi, who'd ledthe bank since 2000.

Bolloré says Italy is treach-erous for him without BenAmmar. "He knows very weIlthe mentality there, and helet me know the various per-sonalities of the men aroundthe table," Bolloré, 51, says.

"1have discovered a very cleverguy, very sensible. He has

big potential:'.

Ben Ammar's clients don't always do as weIl as he does.Those who poured money into Kirch eompanies, which in2002 filed for the biggest German bankruptcy since WorldWar II, lost almost their entire investment. KirchMedia, with$5.5 billion of debts, is selling off its assets. While NewsCorp:s u.S.-traded preferred shares are up 35 percent sineeAlwaleed, 46, announced his first investment in 1997, they've

tumbled 54 percent from their high iuMarch 2000, falliug to $25.70 on JulyIl from $56.38.

Murdoch says he doesn't blame BenAmmar for arranging a losing invest- ::ment in Kirch. "He introduced a lot of :53:people to that; they were aIl over 21 ~

h ~and thought t ere was a big opportu- oS.<

nit)' there," he says. ~Still, Ben Arnmar says, "1always feel B

responsible for a bad dea!." He adds ;ithat his clients also have investment \~

"He's extremely valuable as a negotiator and a road map toEurope or the Middle East," Murdoch, 72, says.

Ben Ammar, who has a tuft of salt-and-pepper hair atophis head and favors blue pinstriped suits, has navigated tho~eworlds aIl his life. He grew up both in Tunisia-wherehis uncle, the late Habib Bourguiba, was the first postinde-pendence president-and in Eu-rope. where his father was anambassador. A holder of Frenchand Tunisian passports, he speaksArabie, English, French and !tal-ian fluently and lives in Paris withhis wife and four children.

For his work, clients pay BenArnmar fees ranging from 1 to 3percent of a transaction's value,with the average being 1.5-2 per-cent, he says.

Berlusconi. 66, paid BenAmmar to bring together Ger-man media entrepreneur LeoKirch, Alwaleed and others in1995 to invest $1 billion inBerluseoni's television company,Mediaset SpA, Ben Ammar says.Mediaset stock has sinee doubledto 7.62 euros as of July 11.

Ben Ammar says he was part-Iy responsible for Alwaleed's de-

CÎsion to invest $400 million inMurdoch's News Corp. in 1997. ln1999, Ben Ammar says, he helpedMurdoch arrange a reduction inMCI WorldCom Inc.'s stake inNews Corp. by having Alwaleedbuy about $255 million of NewsCorp.'s U.S.-traded preferred shares from the telephonecompany. The shares, at $31.88 when the purchase was

announced. have since fallen 19 percent as of July 11.Ben Ammar sometimes works for two different sides in

related transactions. He advised Murdoch on a $1.4 billionÎnvestment in Kirch's pay TV unit in 1999. The same year,Ben Ammar says, Kirch, 76, paid him to put together a $1.3

°Coovertedatan exc/1ange rate ct$l =Ul5. Sources: TaraI: Ben Ammar.8loomberg

bankers and otheradvisers who canshare the blame."There were lots ofexperts," he says dur-ing an interviewaround a coffee tableiu the lobby of theFour Seasons hotelinMilan.

Ben Ammar sayshis clients use in-vestment banks tohelp do financialanalysis of de aIs.

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"They do this kind of stuff l don't know how to do," he says,turning to the chair next to him and picking up two dark-blueinvestment-banking presentation booklets embossed in goldletters with the Lehman Brothers logo.

RISE AND FALLBen Ammar arrancJedinvestments by biHionaireclients in ltaly's biggest conutlen:iaJ broadcasterbeforeiLsIPQ.

DO MediasetStock priee

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Sometimes, the clients skip the investment bankers.Wheu Murdoch bought half of the Stream SpA payTV company from Telecom Italia SpA in 2002, he used

his own in-house people to crunch numbers and hired BenAmmar to broker the deal. "Murdoch didn't want a bank; hedoesn't like investment bankers," Ben Ammar says.

Some investors are skeptical of Ben Ammar's l'ole inthe deals, particularly because he's not a bank and is thuslargely unregulated. "He's a competent man in high finance,but the only problem is that he isn't transparent to themarket," says Antonio Cabrini, an independent fund manag-er in Milan who bought Mediobanca shares after the recentshake-up because he was optimistic the bank would be l'unmore profitably,

Ben Ammar rejects the idea that there could be a conflictof interest when he deals with two clients at once. He says hekeeps ail of his clients' interests in mind when arrangingdeals among them, and it's clear which one ofthem pays himon each transaction. To do otherwise would be dangerous, hesays: "You cannot cheat these guys."

Ben Ammar says his peripatetic youth-which gave himthe ability to bridge different languages, religions and cul-tures-taught him skills that are useful in business today. "1found that wealth to be my only capital," he says.

Born in Tunis in June 1949, when Tunisia was stilla French protectorate, Ben Ammar and his family werethrust into politics after national independence in 1956. Thecountry's first president, Bourguiba, was married to BenAmmar's father's sister. Ben Ammar's father became an am-bassador, moving with his family to France, Germany andItaly. After Bourguiba urged Arabs to recognize Israel in1965, Ben Ammar says, the Arab backlash made him moreintent on bridging different cultures. "For some of my youth,l had bodyguards, and there were numerous attempts on ourcars," he says.

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The son of a Muslim father and a Catholic mother ofCorsican descent, Ben Ammar was raised Muslim. When hisfather was ambassador to Rome, Ben Ammar attended anAnlerican Catholic high school there. "1would go to mass be-cause 1 was curious about this new religion," he says. Toclay,Ben Ammar and bis wife, who is a Catholic Pole, are exposingtheir children to ail religions, including Judaism, he says.

Ben Ammar graduated fi'om Georgetown University inWashington, D.C., and was admitted ta Harvard BusinessSchool, he says. Disappointing his parents, he deferred hisacademic entry to try his hand at films and ended up neverattending graduate school.

Starting in 1974 with $10,000, a secretary and an ac-countant, Ben Ammar built a film studiq in Tunisia calledCarthago Films. He begall by providing production services-including hiring himself out as a driver-for directors who'dcome to Tunisia for the desert backdrops. Clients includedGeorge Lucas, who filmed parts of 1977'5Stm' Wa1"Sthere, andSteven Spielberg, whose 1981 release Raide7"s of the LostAl'kcredits Ben Ammar as a production coordinator for Tunisia.

Breaking through Arab stereotypes in Hollywood was achallenge, says Ben Anlmar, who took care to look every bitthe preppy Georgetown grad he was, sometimes wearing apolo shirt and jeans. "The fact that 1 didn't show up with akaffiyeh and a camel parked outside was a first step," says BenAmmar, who speaks English with an American accent.

. - - -~..-.-Ben Amtllar produced Michael Jacl<sol1's HIStory tour.

moved about $10 million to an offshore account to bribe Ital-ian politicians, Ben Ammar came to Berlusconi's defense,saying the money had been a legitimate payment to him for

work he'd done.ln 1995, Ben Ammar presented his explanation in an in-

terview on a Berlusconi-owned TV channel. Ben Ammarsaid that du ring the early 1990s, he earned commissionsselling a film catalog for Berlusconi and asked that theincome be deposited in the Swiss account that prosecutorsalleged was used for bribes, Ben Ammar says. Rather thangoing toward bribes, some of the money was used ta helppay expenses in Tunisia for the Palestine Liberation Orga-

nization, which was based there from 1982 through 19940,Ben Ammar says. The Italian courts eventuaIly absolvedBerlusconi of the bribery charges. Ben Ammar wasn'tcharged with any wrongdoing.

That same year, Berlusconi's government fell and he start-ed reorganizing the ownership ofhis media empire. BenAmmar says Berlusconi hired him to bring investors into hiscompany, so he contacted family friend Alwaleed. "He was

Saudi but very American, so 1brought him to see Silvio;' BenAmmar says of Alwaleed, who also had been educated in theU.S.-at Menlo College in California-and who's the biggestindividual investor in Citigroup Inc. and Euro Disney SCA.

After Ben Ammar took A1waleed to lunch with Berlusconiin May 1995 at the Italian mediamogul's estate in Arcore, outsideMilan, Alwaleed invested $100mil1ion in Mediaset, 1taly's biggestcommercial broadcaster.

ln aIl, Ben Ammar says, hehelped arrange $1 billion of in-vestments in Mediaset in 1995, in-c1uding purchases by Kirch andDutch media group Nethold, nowpart of Canal Plus SA, Europe'slargest pay TV operator. ln 1996,Berlusconi sold shares ofMediasetta the public, and by 2000, thevalue of Alwaleed's stake hadgrown more than sevenfold. AI-waleed asked Ben Ammar to rep-resent him on Mediaset's board,a seat Ben Ammar resigned thisyear when Alwaleed shed his Me-diaset investment.

Ben Ammar's ties to Murdochga back ta 1995, wh en the Aus-

tralian-born magnate was work-ing on a proposaJ to buy Mediaset,

Ben Ammar and Murdoch say.When Murdoch came to Milan,Ben Ammar took advantage of themoment to approach him regard-ing possible future business.

60 TARAK BEN AMMAR

It was throughthe film businessthat Ben Ammarmet and started tocourt rich clients. Hebegan his relation-ship with Kirch inthe 1970s, when heproduced FrancoZeffirelli's La T1"avi-ata for him. 20

Ben Ammar says ]]/28/97 lIllhe first met Italy's '98 '99 '00 '01 '02 '03Berlusconi in 1983 'r(xnl1rt't~rrt'(tlll1l1tt'd'vot'I1U()((tH1<1ry~ll,jreS,.ep"ese"toOip.

in Tunisia after the/\me,.;(.ill!deoos,tary,eceiptSOlJrce:81oomlx~r!J

Italian ambassador called to arrange a visit to Ben Ammar'soffices. "1w~ a big shot in films; he was not quite a big shot,"Ben Ammar says of the future Italian premier, who'djust theyear before started the second of what would become threenational Berlusconi-owned TV networks. "He said, '1 wannaget in films,'" Ben Ammar recalls.

ROLLER COASTERSaudi Prince Alwaleed saw his News Corp.inveslment. recol11rnended by Ben Ammar.rise and fall.

$60 News Corp.Share price*

50

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After their first meeting at Carthago studios, BenAmmar and Berlusconi went to dinner at the Tunisianvacation home oftheir mutual friend Italian Prime

Minister Bettino Craxi, Ben Am-

mal' says. Craxi was instrumentalin helping Berlusconi build hisnational networks, issuing in 1984a decree that suspended enforce-ment of Italian state television'smonopoly on the market.

Berlusconi and Ben Ammarstarted producing TV miniseriestogether and in 1989, formedQuinta Communications SA,a production and distributioncompany based in P~ris, Ben

Ammar says.ln 1992, Milan magistrates

began the Clean Hands crack-down, charging Craxi and otherlegislators and businesspeoplewith corruption. Craxi tled ltaly in1994 for exile in Tunisia and wasfound guilty in absentia, dyingthere in 2000. ln 1994, Berlusconientered politics and was elected tohis first of two stints as premier.

At the same time, the Milanprosecutors put Berlusconi underinvestigation, partly because ofa money transfer involving BenAmmar. When the prosecutorscharged that Berlusconi had

Berlusconi met Ben Al11l11ar while on vacationin Tunisia.

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Murdoch and Ben Ammar crossed paths again in 1997,when, partly on Ben Ammar's advice, Alwaleed bought theNews Corp. preferred shares. Today, the two men speaksometimes five times a week, Ben Ammar says. "WithRupert, 1 have handshakes, and with other people, 1 havecontracts," he says.

Murdoch says Ben Ammarwas most valuable in helpingcreate Sky Italia SpA, a newItalian pay TV service. To doit, Ben Ammar spent the pastthree years negotiating thepurchases of two ather Italianpay TV companies that Mur-

doch then merged, Ben Am-

mal' and Murdoch say.The negotiations ran from

2000 to 2003 and involvedtwo sets of chief executivesat both Telecom Italia, whichowned half of Stream, andVivendi Universal SA, whichowned Telepiu SpA. First,Ben Ammar arranged NewsCorp.'s €48 million ($54.5million) purchase from Tele-com Italia in 2002 of the halfof Stream it didn't alreadyOWIl.He then helped arrangeMurdoch's €920 million pur-chase ofTelepiu this year.

Bolloré says he tul'ned toBen Ammar about a year agofor advice on how to addmedia investments to hisholdings. Before they couldtackle media deals, the Mediobanca battle came up. ln Sep-tember 2002, Mediobanca-the biggest shareholder in Gen-erali-replaced Generali's chairman with Bernheim, a Frenchfriend and business partner of Bolloré's.

Mediohanca's move angered some of the company's otherbig shareholders-mostly the top Italian banks-putting at

risk the jobs of Bernheim and Chief Executive Maranghi. Todefend Bernheim, Bolloré turned to Ben Ammar. "1 under-stood he was very weIl connected in Italy," Bolloré says.

Bolloré, who already had some Mediobanca shares, accu-mulated a 5 percent stake. A group ofbanks that was alliedwith the other shareholders and was led by UniCredito Ital-iano SpA counterattacked by buying shares of Generali, tak-ing control of the insurance company that is Mediobanca'sbiggest holding.

By April, Ben Ammar helped negotiate a compromise:

Bernheim kept his job at Generali, while the Italian banksgot their way and fired Mediobanca's Maranghi. By savingBernheim'sjob, Bolloré loosened the grip that ltalian banks

61

have long held on Mediobanca, Generali and, by extension,ltalian finance to the exclusion of investors from othercountries, BoUoré and other shareholders say- "If foreignersare inside, it's the sign of the times," says Lucio Lamberti,who helps oversee more than $500 million at Commerzbank

SGR in Rome, includingMediobanca shares. "Weare an open country withopen markets."

Bolloré says the difficul-ties he had as a Mediobancainvestor, with ltalian share-holders trying to fend himoff, showed him Italy stil1needs to change. Until then,an adviser like Ben Amma.ris essential for getting avoice in the management ofItalian companies, he says."They are closed to the for-eign markets, and if theycontinue like that, they'l1continue as a good countryfor the food and arts but notfor international investors,"BollOl'é says.

Ben Ammar l'uns hismergers and investment ad-vice business through aNetherlands-based holdingcompany he controls calledHolland Coordinator & Ser-vices Co., he says. Paymentsfrom clients sn ch as Mur-doch go to that company,which pays corporate taxes,

he says. As a French citizen, Ben Ammar pays personal taxesto France, he says.

Ben Ammar works from the Paris office of Quinta Com-munications-or from any place his one-man enterprise hap-pens to be. On one morning in June, he's holding meetings

Alwaleed's parents are friends of Ben Al11l11ar's fal11ily.

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'My raie is to say things to theprince and Silvio and MurdochUnat they call1'tsay to eachottner: !Bel1lAmmar says.

in the lobby of the Four Seasons in Milan. "Please, corne in,"he says, ushering guests into a cluster of chairs and a sofa thatare his makeshift office.

He says he's not looking for new clients. "1 have enoughnow," he says. 'Tm having fun with Bonoré and Murdoch. But

62

if sorneone calls me and it's an emergency, it's like a doctorwith plenty of patients: Yau rnight not turn someone away."

His project to create an investment bank with ABN Arnrocould be a vehicle for new business, although it's only anarrangement on paper now. "Ifs ajoint venture to look atadvisory opportunities," says ABN Arnro spokesman StevenBlaney in London.

Ben Ammar says he still spends about 35 percent ofhistime in the role of film producer. Holland Group, as hecalls it, has subsidiaries involved in film and television

production and holds majority stakes in companies that ownfilm studios in Rome and Hammamet, Tunisia. It also buysrights to some half a dozen movies a year for TV distributionin such countries as France, Italy and Spain and then profitsby negotiating broadcast arrangements on networks there,

he says."Tarak has been very helpful and instrumental in Europe,"

says Elie Samaha-producer of such films as The Whole NineYards, starring Bruce Willis-who sells European broadcast

BLOOMBERG rOOLS

Ben Allllllar and His Clients

TARAK BEN AMMAR

rights for many of his films through Ben Ammar. "He hasvery extensive relationships."

Through Quinta Communications, Ben Ammar managedMichael Jackson's HIStory concert tour in 1996 and '97 afterAIwaleed introduced him to the singer, he says. Most recent-ly, he coproduced the 2002 Wamer Bros.-distributed Femme

Fatale, directed by Brian De Palma and staring Antonio Ban-deras and Rebecca Ramijn-Stamos.

But it's the mixing with maguls that daims mast of BenAmmar's interest-ta the paint where he's ready ta becomeone ofthem, putting his own money inta the transactions hebrokers. "Now l'm becoming more of an investor," he says.'Tve got an these investors looking for opportunities. l'Il in-vest with them."

As Ben Ammar seizes those opportunities, he'll also faceincreased risks. Ifhis clients lose money on their investments,now he'll feel the pain too. .

--- --~+--VERNON SllVER is a senior writer at Bloomberg News in Rome. With additionalreporting by ALINA TRABATTONI in Rome.

vtsilver@bloornberg.net

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