Billionaire Kirk Kerkorian dead at age 98

Nathan Bomey | USA TODAY

Show Caption Hide Caption Las Vegas mogul Kirk Kerkorian dies Kirk Kerkorian, the son of Armenian immigrants who became a billionaire Las Vegas mogul, has died at the age of 98. The veteran US businessman was the largest shareholder in MGM Resorts International.

Billionaire investor, casino mogul and real estate titan Kirk Kerkorian, 98, who played an influential role in the rise of Las Vegas and once tried unsuccessfully to take over automaker Chrysler, died Monday night. The cause was not immediately known.

"MGM Resorts and our family of 62,000 employees are honoring the memory of a great man, a great business leader, a great community leader, an innovator, and one of our country's greatest generation," MGM Resorts International CEO Jim Murren said in a statement. "Mr. Kerkorian combined brilliant business insight with steadfast integrity to become one of the most reputable and influential financiers of our time."

Kerkorian, who held a majority of MGM Resorts International's stock until recent years and previously owned the separate MGM Studios, had a net worth of $4 billion, according to Forbes estimates. That made him the 393rd wealthiest person in the world.

He was a self-made tycoon. After a poor childhood in which he sold newspapers and did odd jobs, he served as a Royal Air Force pilot in World War II, gaining an appreciation for flight that he later converted into his first fortune.

"When you're a self-made man you start very early in life," he told the Las Vegas Review-Journal in 1999. "In my case it was at 9 years old when I started bringing income into the family. You get a drive that's a little different, maybe a little stronger, than somebody who inherited."

Born in California to Armenian immigrant parents, Kerkorian was the youngest of four children. He dropped out of school in eighth grade and became an amateur boxer. During the war, he flew supply planes in a famously dangerous route from Canada to Britain.

In the years after the war, he got rich off a business called Trans International Airlines, ferrying gamblers to Las Vegas on surplus warplanes Kerkorian had acquired.

An early gamble in Vegas paid off handsomely for Kerkorian. In the 1960s, he purchased 80 acres of property on the Las Vegas strip where the Caesars casino now stands in a deal later viewed as a brilliant speculative play.

In 1969, flush with cash, he purchased the Metro Goldwyn Mayer studios and opened the International Hotel in Las Vegas, luring Barbra Streisand as its first headliner and, later, Elvis Presley.

Kerkorian opened the original MGM Grand Hotel in 1973, a complex that later became the Las Vegas Hilton and is today Bally's. Two decades later, he opened the still-standing 5,000-room MGM Grand Hotel in a different location.

More recently, he played a central role in the development of the sprawling, $8.5 billion City Center casino resort destination on the Las Vegas Strip.

Kerkorian owned MGM Studios from 1969 to 1990 and 1996 to 2005. He sold the company to Ted Turner in the late 1980s, but later regained control from a French bank before offloading the company for a second time to a Sony-led consortium.

His business exploits included a failed bid in 1996 to take over one of the Big Three automakers, Chrysler, which was still an independent company at the time. Chrysler instead sold out to Germany-based Daimler-Benz.

In 2006, Kerkorian purchased nearly 1/10th of General Motors' stock and pushed the company to merge with Nissan and Renault. Though GM appointed a Kerkorian representative to its board, the company spurned his merger push, and Kerkorian sold off his stake.

Three years later, GM filed for bankruptcy — as did Chrysler.

Kerkorian's company, Tracinda Corp., was named after his daughters Tracy and Linda. He had several marriages, at least three of which ended in divorce.

An intensely private person, Kerkorian was thrust into the spotlight in the late 1990s in a dispute with Lisa Bonder, his wife of 28 days. Kerkorian agreed to pay child support for Bonder's daughter after a bizarre feud in which Kerkorian's lawyer and a private investigator were convicted of wiretapping the billionaire's ex-wife phone.

His tumultuous private life occupied the headlines at the occasional expense of his philanthropic doings.

His Lincy Foundation, formed in 1989 to aid northern Armenia after an earthquake, has distributed more than $1 billion in charitable contributions, according to MGM.

Follow USA TODAY reporter Nathan Bomey on Twitter @NathanBomey.