“In 1999, Al Gore, then U.S. vice president and a Democratic candidate for president, sold $6,000 worth of cows,” Ken Wells and Ari Levy report for Bloomberg News. “The former senator, who spent most of his working life in Congress, had a net worth of about $1.7 million and assets that included pasture rents from a family farm and royalties from a zinc mine, remnants of his rural roots in Carthage, Tennessee. Funds from the cattle sale went to three of his kids, according to federal disclosure forms filed as part of his presidential run.”
“Fourteen years later, he made an estimated $100 million in a single month,” Wells and Levy report. “In January, the Current TV network, which he helped to start in 2004, was sold to Qatari-owned Al Jazeera Satellite Network for about $500 million. After debt, he grossed an estimated $70 million for his 20 percent stake, according to people familiar with the transaction.”
Wells and Levy report, “Two weeks later, Gore exercised options, at $7.48 a share, on 59,000 shares of Apple Inc. stock that he’d been granted for serving on the Cupertino, California-based company’s board since 2003. On paper, it was about a $30 million payday based on the company’s share price on the day he claimed the options… Gore isn’t finished exercising his Apple stock grants. Those 59,000 are part of 101,358 Apple options and shares of restricted stock Gore has amassed, according to company filings, giving his total holdings a gross value of more than $45.6 million today… Gore has remade himself into a wealthy businessman, amassing a fortune that may exceed $200 million. That’s close to the $250 million net worth of 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, whom President Barack Obama and Democrats targeted in ads and speeches as being out of touch with most Americans.”
Much more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews readers too numerous to mention individually for the heads up.]
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Apple board member Al Gore buys 59,000 Apple shares for $7.475 each – January 18, 2013
Apple board member Al Gore sells Current TV to Al Jazeera – January 3, 2013
Apple board member Al Gore faces conflict of interest charges over Apple’s hydrogen power plans – April 9, 2012
Apple Board member Al Gore to separate from wife Tipper after 40 years of marriage – June 1, 2010
Apple Board member Al Gore gets 10,387 more Apple options – March 1, 2010