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This Man's Job: Make Bill Gates RicherSecretive Money Manager Michael Larson Helped Microsoft Co-Founder's Fortune Balloon to $82 BillionINVESTMENTS THAT HELPED MAKE BILL GATES RICHERIn 2013, Mr. Gates and other buyers paid $161 million for the Ritz-Carlton in San Francisco. The hotel is now valued at about $200 million, positioning Mr. Gates for a profit if he decides to sell. JOHN SUTTONInvitations to a dinner party from Bill and Melinda Gates at their mansion near Seattle in February included an unusual request: Wear pink or platinum. Spotlights installed for the occasion bathed the room in a pink glow.Mr. Gates raised his glass to toast the guest of honor, Michael Larson, who sat nearby wearing a pink button-down shirt, his favorite color. The Microsoft Corp. co-founder said Mr. Larson has his "complete trust and faith," according to people who were there."Melinda and I are free to pursue our vision of a healthier and better-educated world because of what Michael has done" for the past 20 years, Mr. Gates told about 40 dinner guests. Because of Mr. Larson, the world's richest man said, he sleeps well at night.The arrangement is simple: Mr. Larson makes money, and Mr. Gates gives it away. Since 1994, the 54-year-old Mr. Larson has managed Mr. Gates's investment empire, mostly through a firm called Cascade Investment LLC.Few people know much about Mr. Gates's assets or Mr. Larson's tactics—and the two men want to keep it that way. Real-estate investments, which range from the fancy Charles Hotel in Cambridge, Mass., to a 490-acre ranch in Wyoming once owned by William F. "Buffalo Bill" Cody, are often cloaked in nondescript names to make it harder to trace the deals back to Mr. Gates.Cascade's headquarters are in an unmarked building in the Seattle suburb of Kirkland. Mr. Larson is so protective of his boss that he used to be nicknamed "the Gateskeeper," says someone who worked with him. Employees who leave often sign confidentiality agreements barring them from talking about Cascade, people familiar with the matter say.Mr. Gates's net worth has swelled to about $82 billion from $5 billion since he hired the former bond-fund manager and gave him autonomy to buy and sell investments as he sees fit. In addition to Cascade, which holds most of the billionaire's personal fortune, Mr. Larson oversees the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's $41 billion endowment.Cascade doesn't publicly disclose its performance results, but people familiar with the firm say it usually churns out steady annual gains. Because of Mr. Larson's relatively conservative strategy, Cascade's losses when the financial crisis hit in 2008 were smaller than the 27% drop by the Dow Jones Industrial Average for the full year, people familiar with the results say.Since 1995, Mr. Larson has delivered a compound annual return of 11% for the Gates Foundation and two predecessors, outperforming the S&P 500 stock index by more than one percentage point.Mr. Gates, 58, would be worth about the same if he had kept all the Microsoft stock he got after starting the company in 1975. Mr. Gates owned a 45% stake when Microsoft went public in 1986. The shares are now worth about $150 billion, excluding dividends. Microsoft shares have nearly tripled in the past five years.But Mr. Gates has sold nearly $40 billion of Microsoft stock since 1994 as part of an effort to diversify his investments. The Gates Foundation also has given $30 billion to charitable causes.Messrs. Larson and Gates declined to comment on their relationship, but people who know them say it has evolved into a bond that is crucial to the billionaire's philanthropy. Mr. Larson's many profitable investments on behalf of Mr. Gates and sales of some of his Microsoft shares have increased the size of donations by Mr. Gates and his family to the Gates Foundation.That means more money can be plowed into the foundation's mission to fight disease and improve education in the developing world.Bill and Melinda Gates plan to donate 95% of their wealth to the foundation, the world's largest philanthropic organization. In addition to $28 billion from Mr. Gates, its endowment includes $12 billion in gifts from Berkshire Hathaway Inc.'s Warren Buffett."They're not two buddies, for sure," says Steve Walsh, former chief executive of Legg Mason Inc.'s Western Asset Management unit, about Messrs. Gates and Larson. They rarely mingle socially, people close to them say.Mr. Walsh says he was struck by how much effort Mr. Gates put into the dinner party for Mr. Larson at the former Microsoft chief executive's 66,000-square-foot mansion on the edge of Lake Washington. The reference to platinum on the invitations was a nod to the metal's 20th-anniversary symbolism."It was almost tender—and endearing," says Mr. Walsh, who has known Mr. Larson for decades.The Wall Street Journal pieced together a snapshot of Mr. Gates's investments from interviews with more than two dozen people familiar with Cascade, securities filings that detail some holdings of the firm and real-estate records. Few of Cascade's investments have been publicly announced.The Wyoming ranch is part of a bet by Cascade on the steep rebound in real-estate prices since the financial crisis. The firm owns at least 100,000 acres of farmland in California, Illinois, Iowa, Louisiana and other states—or an area seven times bigger than Manhattan.Cascade also owns more than $24 billion of shares in companies such as Canadian National Railway Co., AutoNation Inc. and Republic Services Inc. The holdings reflect Mr. Larson's value-conscious, buy-and-hold philosophy, mirroring Mr. Buffett, a close friend of Mr. Gates. Canadian National shares are up 207% in the past five years.While much of Mr. Gates's money is in stocks, Mr. Larson has plowed smaller chunks into private equity and other types of adventurous, so-called alternative assets, according to people familiar with the matter. Sizable bets on the bond markets have been reduced recently.Some investments have been duds. In 2007, Cascade and other investors bought a 13% stake in PlanetOut Inc., the publisher of Out magazine and a cruise-line operator targeting gays and lesbians. The company's shares soon sank, and it sold some assets and was acquired by another firm in 2009.Surprisingly, Mr. Gates has few technology-related investments. As of June 30, he held a 3.6% stake in Microsoft, worth about $13.9 billion based on Thursday's closing stock price.Mr. Gates makes his own tech and biotech investments, which aren't held by Cascade. He started digital-image company Corbis Corp. in 1989. Smaller investments include stakes in nuclear-reactor developer TerraPower LLC and meat-substitute maker Beyond Meat.Mr. Gates is updated on all the other investments every other month. "At the end of the day, all decisions go through Michael," says Mike Jackson, chairman and CEO of AutoNation, who considers Mr. Larson a friend. Mr. Larson is a director of the auto retailer, and Cascade owns a 14% stake in AutoNation valued at about $841 million.Mr. Gates decided to hire Mr. Larson after the Journal reported in 1993 that the entrepreneur's money manager at the time had previously been convicted of bank fraud. Mr. Gates was a close friend of the money manager and already knew about the conviction, the Journal said, but began looking for someone new after the uproar.After an extensive screening process, a recruiter invited Mr. Larson to meet Mr. Gates. The money manager had worked for a mergers-and-acquisitions firm and run bond funds for Putnam Investments, now a subsidiary of Canadian insurer Great-West Lifeco, Inc., before striking out on his own.The two men hit it off. Mr. Gates was impressed by Mr. Larson's self-assured yet low-key personality, people familiar with Mr. Gates's thinking say.After taking the job, Mr. Larson decided to go "off the radar," says Roger McNamee, a co-founder of Elevation Partners, a Silicon Valley firm that was an early investor in Facebook Inc. He says Mr. Larson believed a low profile was the best way to approach such high-profile investing following the bad publicity about his predecessor.Mr. Larson farms out more than $10 billion in assets at any given time to roughly 25 outside money managers, partly as a way to drum up new investment ideas. The outsiders aren't told any nonpublic details about the size of Mr. Gates's portfolio or its holdings, people familiar with the matter say.A news release announcing last year's acquisition of the Ritz-Carlton in San Francisco, a neoclassical gem in Nob Hill, identified only Cascade's co-investor in the $161 million purchase. A publicist for the Charles Hotel said she had no idea Mr. Gates is a co-owner of the hotel."It's an extraordinary tribute to Michael that if you think about Bill Gates and his reputation, you never hear about Cascade," Mr. McNamee says.Married with three children, Mr. Larson prefers Levi's jeans and dark pink shirts. Some current and former employees say he can be brusque and controlling, even deciding the seating chart for the investment firm's annual holiday party.James Floyd, chief investment officer at Claremont McKenna College, a liberal-arts school in California from which Mr. Larson graduated in 1980, says he is "brutally honest, but in a refreshing way. You know exactly where you stand with him." Mr. Larson advises the college's investment committee.Cascade employees are expected to be frugal. Even though Mr. Gates owns nearly half of the Four Seasons Holding Inc. luxury-hotel chain through Cascade, the investment firm's executives stay at less-expensive hotels, even when traveling on Four Seasons business.The $3.8 billion acquisition with Saudi Arabia's Prince Alwaleed bin Talal came in 2007 near the real-estate market's peak."There's a symbolic value to continually reminding their partners that Four Seasons is a financial investment, not an ego investment," says Philip Maritz, co-founder and president of hotel investment firm Maritz, Wolff & Co. He sold the Four Seasons in Houston to Cascade last year.Mr. Larson also is known as a golf nut who enjoys networking more than working on his backswing. People who know him say he puts immense value on personal relationships, cultivating them with an intensity that can feel tiring.He attends Allen & Co.'s big-name conference in Sun Valley, Idaho, with Mr. Gates.Bill and Melinda Gates also attend Mr. Larson's daylong round-table discussion held every December in Cascade's conference room. Invited high rollers from the finance and corporate worlds discuss themes and topics for the year ahead. Recent guests include Liberty Media Corp. Chairman John Malone, TPG co-founder David Bonderman andEdward Lampert, the hedge-fund manager who is CEO of Sears Holding Corp.Cascade has grown to roughly 100 employees, compared with 1,200 at the Gates Foundation. Mr. Larson likes to hire recent Claremont McKenna graduates. Employees are discouraged from using Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social media—and from sending email from their work accounts to outsiders who aren't business partners.In 2009, Mr. Larson dispatched a 25-year-old Cascade employee to negotiate the purchase of multimillion-dollar mansions in Jupiter Island, Fla., hoping the firm could squeeze bargains out of homeowners burned by Bernard L. Madoff's massive Ponzi scheme, people familiar with the matter say.The employee was told to say he worked for a Cascade subsidiary called Front Range Investment Holdings LLC, not Cascade or Mr. Gates, these people say. The employee nailed down the purchase of one mansion for $5 million, real-estate records show. It was on the market for $12 million in 2008.Front Range is described on the deed that recorded the purchase as a Colorado limited liability company, and other public records include an address at a post-office in Kirkland, Wash., where Cascade is based.Online real-estate firm Zillow Inc. estimates that the four-bedroom, nearly 12,000-square-foot "European villa" with a private dock is now worth $6.4 million. The mansion is for sale for about $5.3 million. Cascade is willing to walk away with a small profit.http://uds.ak.o.brightcove.com/47628783001/47628783001_4586448579001_4586439397001.mp4Sources: https://www.ft.com/content/ce87f48a-7208-11e5-9b9e-690fdae72044This Man's Job: Make Bill Gates Richer

This question relates to the whole history of subdivisions in Puna district on Hawai’i Island, and the colonization of the island as well. The very short version:At the time of creation of these subdivisions, there was simply no consideration by either party to the deal (the colonial landowners or the county) of lava flow hazard. Primarily because they didn’t have to care. It was the buyers who would have to deal with that hazard (if it was even perceived as a hazard at that time). The point of the subdivisions was to make money for the county and the landowners. Nobody much was actually expected to live there!The longer background & related information:By the 1950’s and early 1960’s, the colonial landowners of most of the land in Puna had tried just about everything that was guaranteed to fail to extract profit from that land, which at the time was in relatively few and large parcels.Mostly, they tried sugar and cattle. There is very little to no soil in much of the district so sugar was not competitive with better growing areas, nor was there good grazing fodder (the “bamboo orchids” that are found throughout the area were originally aerially seeded for cattle fodder, and the albizia trees were introduced to build soil through rapid biomass growth). The terrain is rough uneven cracked or chunky lava flow, not friendly to most grazing animals (goats might do OK).So, their last resort to profit from the land, taken in the late 1950’s and into the 1960’s (and a few more in the 1970’s, and now again recently on the 1990 flow at Kaimu/Kalapana) was to subdivide the land into thousands of “agricultural” zoned house-lots, primarily to be sold sight unseen to north Americans and Japanese. “Own land in paradise!” and “retire in Hawai’i!” and so on, you get the idea. Much like the swampland real estate subdivisions in Florida and the 20-acre “ranches” in Wyoming and so on. But on a much much grander scale - there are over 57,000 buildable lots in total, in the various subdivisions in Puna. A majority are one to three acres in size, with some at 1/4 and 1/2 acre and a few at five-plus acres, depending on the subdivision.This was a deal cut between the few large colonial land owners (such as W. H. Shipman, Watamull, Lyman, and others) and the county government. The county got the promise of tax revenue from these mass quantities of lots. The land owners got the ability to have mass quantities of lots to sell to people who mostly would never see them or the reality of the context before buying.Besides no consideration of lava flow hazard, there was also no consideration of infrastructure, present or future, private or public.Subdivision “roads” were/are often raw bulldozer cuts through the jungle on top of the underlying lava. “Spaghetti lots” were platted so that the least amount of (private) roads could access the largest quantity of lots. There was/is no municipal water or sewer in most cases. Grid power availability varies by subdivision and/or location within subdivision, and each lot owner pays a special assessment fee to actually hook up.As to public infrastructure, these 57,000-plus subdivision lots were, and mostly still are, served by two-lane rural highway. Nobody much was ever supposed to actually live there! It was just a land scam. But for decades now it’s been the fastest growing part of the state - the ultimate low-density suburban sprawl. As the build-out has continued, the various inevitable and massive impacts of zero planning effort over many decades have increasingly surfaced.This includes the lava flow risk, especially in the zone 1 and 2 region subdivisions such as Leilani, now home to its very own eruption…!

Wyoming, State of BlissBliss, for my purposes, is defined as low taxes and sensible public policy. If you had no business or familial commitments, where would be the perfect state in which to live? My first plan was to winter in inner city Detroit and summer in one of the many half-abandoned condo forests in Florida (doubtlessly making us the first inner city Detroit family to use winter as a verb). I calculated that we could take Florida residence for tax purposes and rent out our homes while we were gone for an amount greater than the necessary mortgage servicing. We would be living for free. What's more, Detroit real estate has been a terrific investment since the bankruptcy filing, appreciating by over 20% on the expectation that there was little left to lose. My first efforts at achieving real estate bliss ran into some opposition from my wife who stated delicately but forcefully that she did not plan on joining me at either locale.Plan B was Texas in the winter and Alaska in the summer, for daylight and not too much heat in the summer and state income tax avoidance year round. This got a somewhat warmer reception than my inner city Detroit/Florida half-abandoned condo forest scheme, but still did not pass the finish line. My bride is less consistently misanthropic than I am. I prefer a few hundred miles between me and my neighbors (they probably do too) but she wanted some more company than these states offer, at least in my favorite spots.Tahoe on the Nevada side is a gem, but the gaming industry presence is seedy and depressing. It is a shortcoming, but people losing money that they cannot afford makes me feel bad. I am happy to invest in it, but not something I want to live around.The current idea is to earn in state income tax free Wyoming and spend in next door sales tax free Montana.Wyoming is one of the states without income tax.It is next door to Montana, one of the states without sales tax.It is also an extremely attractive state, nationally recognized as one of the top ten states for scenery.One of the easiest, objective criteria is crime (one can quibble over the attractiveness of many characteristics, but crime is a pretty objective negative). Wyoming crime is very low.Wyoming public policy is quite conservative and market-oriented. It is unlikely to lead to radical public policy changes in the future. As a rough proxy for public policy predictability, here is their latest Electoral College composition by county:Wyoming will remain solvent long after California, Illinois, and Connecticut jack up taxes further and seek federal bailout money to reward themselves for their fiscal profligacy.Besides lacking a state tax on personal or corporate income, Wyoming has many other tax advantages. There is essentially no state inheritance tax. There is no state gift tax. There is no tax on out of state retirement income. There is no excise tax. There is no tax on mineral ownership. There is no intangible tax. There is no tax on real estate sales. A dynasty trust administered in the state shields real estate from federal estate tax for up to a thousand years. Property taxes are low.A recent survey names Wyoming,a model of good management and a prospering population. The state is particularly efficient at managing its debt, owing the equivalent of just 20.4% of annual revenue in fiscal 2010. Wyoming also has a tax structure that, according to the Tax Foundation, is the nation's most-favorable for businesses - it does not have any corporate income taxes. The state has experienced an energy boom in recent years. The mining industry, which includes oil and gas extracting, accounted for 29.4% of the state's GDP in 2011 alone, more than in any other state. As of last year, Wyoming's poverty, home foreclosure, and unemployment rates were all among the lowest in the nation.According to Tax Foundation, Wyoming's 2010 tax burden of 7.77% ranks 5th lowest out of 50 states, and is below the national average of 9.9%. Wyoming's taxpayers pay $3721 per capita in state and local taxes. Wyoming ranks 1st in the Tax Foundation's State Business Tax Climate Index. The Index compares the states in five areas of taxation that impact business: corporate taxes, individual income taxes, sales taxes, unemployment insurance taxes, and taxes on property, including residential and commercial property. The ranks of neighboring states are as follows: Montana, 8th, South Dakota, 2nd, Nebraska, 31st, Colorado, 18th, Utah, 10th, and Idaho, 20th. Wyoming levies no individual income tax, joining seven other states with the same policy: Alaska, Florida, Nevada, South Dakota, Texas, Washington, and Wyoming. Wyoming levies no corporate income tax, joining three other states with the same policy: Nevada, South Dakota, and Wyoming. Wyoming levies a 4% general sales or use tax on consumers, which is below the national median of 6%. The average local sales tax rate is an additional 1.34%. Wyoming's state and local governments collect $1719 per person in general sales taxes and $214 per person in excise taxes, for a combined figure of $1932, which ranks 3rd highest nationally. Wyoming's gasoline tax stands at 14¢ (2nd lowest nationally), while its cigarette tax stands at $0.6 (12th lowest nationally.). Want to avoid Wyoming sales taxes? Shop in nearby Montana. Montana levies a 0% general sales or use tax on consumers, which is below the national median of 6%. Montana's state and local governments collect $0 per person in general sales taxes and $546 per person in excise taxes, for a combined figure of $546, which ranks 3rd lowest nationally. Montana's gasoline tax stands at 27.8¢ (22nd highest nationally), while its cigarette tax stands at $1.7 (16th highest nationally.).Tax Freedom Day is the day when Americans finally have earned enough money to pay off their total tax bill for the year. In 2013, Wyoming taxpayers worked until April 16th (17th latest nationally) to pay their total tax bill. The Tax Freedom Days of neighboring states are: Montana, April 10th (ranked 19th earliest nationally); South Dakota, April 4th (ranked 6th earliest nationally); Nebraska, April 12th (ranked 23rd earliest nationally); Colorado, April 17th (ranked 16th latest nationally); Utah, April 13th (ranked 24th earliest nationally); and Idaho, April 9th (ranked 15th earliest nationally).Sadly, workers in my state of Connecticut are indentured servants for the state through the first half of May and only start working for themselves and their families around Memorial Day. Wyoming workers are able to work and save on their own behalf for almost a full extra month each year. This represents a spectacular potential to generate and compound wealth over the long-term:Wyoming is also in the top 10% most pro-business states according to Pollina Corporate Real Estate, Inc. This study combined factors related to taxes, human resources, right-to-work legislation, energy costs, infrastructure spending, worker compensation legislation, and jobs lost or gained.