No. of Recommendations: 3
And all the while the businesses were circling the drain, how much of their cash was he sucking out in management fees, and licensing fees, and consulting fees, and administrative fees, and salaries for his spawn, and ... ?
A lot! Probably tons of cash! Which is why he's certainly not a moron, and why it's probably not accurate to use these bankruptcies to argue that he's not a good businessman. He set up these deals so that his personal financial success was not tied to the success of the underlying companies. That in itself shows a fair amount of acumen. And then once those deals were set up, he made sure that he made a ton of money and got his profits up front, leaving everyone else to hold the bag.
I'm not sure that makes him a "bad" businessman - or at least, not "bad" in the sense of being incapable or incompetent, rather than "bad" in the sense of being a bad person.
