With Google CEO Larry Page's wedding planned for Dec. 8, BusinessWeek takes a look at what billionaires risk when they tie the knot
Google co-founder and Chief Executive Larry Page's wedding this weekend is supposed to be a secret affair. But his own
search engine is undermining the effort. A recent Google search for
"Larry Page marriage" revealed a number of details about the event.
Page will definitely be married on Dec. 8 to a woman named Lucy
Southworth at an "undisclosed location." According to one blog post,
Page might be married on Necker Island, Richard Branson's 74-acre
estate in the British Virgin Islands.
In this Web-friendly age, billionaires, politicians, and others who
live in the public eye have a hard time keeping information about their
lives private. Because the public is so interested in the marriages of
the rich and famous, every detail of a billionaire's personal life—from
courtship to wedding to, if they're unlucky, divorce—ends up shooting
through millions of fused networks and popping up on millions of
strangers' computer screens. It's true if you're Bill Gates of Microsoft, Warren Buffett of Berkshire Hathaway, or Oprah Winfrey of Harpo Entertainment. Page is no exception.
Yes, the rich really are different from you and me. For most people, a
wedding is a simple, joyous occasion. Family and friends gather to
celebrate the ceremonial joining of you and your true love. For
billionaires it's more complicated, with stresses and strains that
others don't bear. They don't just have to choose a florist and a band;
they usually need a good lawyer, too.
Marriage Means Business
Attorneys familiar with billionaire marriages urge their clients to
proceed with care and caution. "A billionaire has to treat an upcoming
marriage as a merger. But it's a merger with a potential enemy," says
New York divorce lawyer Raoul Felder.
Prenuptial agreements are important, but they're no guarantee of a
satisfactory split if things go south. Consider the divorce of Steven
Spielberg, now at DreamWorks Animation,
and his first wife Amy Irving. She claimed their prenup was invalid
because it had been written on a napkin and she hadn't had legal
representation. A judge tossed it out; Irving got $100 million.
The prenup of Bob Johnson, the founder of Black Entertainment Television,
held up, but it still cost him plenty. He agreed to a deal with his
wife, Sheila Johnson, in which she would receive half of their assets
if they split up. By the time they did get divorced in 2002, his media
empire was worth billions—and she got her half. "Very rich people have
trouble sometimes knowing exactly what they're worth," says Felder.
"Worth is often ephemeral."
Valuations are tricky, too. Donald Schiller, of Chicago's Schiller,
Du Canto & Fleck, the nation's largest matrimonial law firm, says
valuing a billionaire's worth is particularly complicated when real
estate and other privately held property is involved. "You can't
evaluate them the same way you can evaluate assets traded on the New
York Stock Exchange," he says.
Dishing Dirt
Another issue that comes with prenups is privacy. Agreements can
include confidentiality clauses to prevent one of the parties involved
from giving out information about a marriage in case of divorce. That
can mean barring anything from TV interviews about the ex to writing a
book. "Prenuptials often waive a spouse's rights to develop
intellectual property from details of the marriage," says Schiller.
He continued, "If it's a well-done premarital agreement and
well-documented, the person trying to get out of it could end up with a
lot less [if he or she goes public]," Schiller says. "You have to make
it…very expensive…for somebody to give a lot of personal information
out to the public."
Friendly Divorces Are Rare
It's possible to have an amicable divorce, even if you're a
billionaire. When Tim Blixseth, the billionaire founder of the
Yellowstone Club, split from his wife, Edra, in 2006, they divided up
$2 billion in combined net worth in a single afternoon.
But that is the exception. You're more likely to see a high-profile
mudfest like the one Roman Abramovitch, the Russian oil magnate, got
into in March, 2007. His wife, Irina, learned that Roman was dating a
23-year-old Russian model, Daria Zhukova. Irina hired two prominent
British lawyers, filed for divorce, and ended up with half of her
husband's assets.
Given all of the billionaire marriages that have ended badly, Larry
Page may well have a prenup ready before he takes his vows on Dec. 8.
Money doesn't buy happiness, even if you're capable of spending
billions.
Still, Page could give up half his wealth and still be plenty rich.
With Google's stock trading near $700, his stake in the search engine
is worth nearly $20 billion.
From Businessweek.
