Check back in 5 years to see if this donation actually happens. People in the "public eye" have a history of making splashy announcements and when it comes time to write the check ... well "circumstances have changed." See Boone Pickens splashy announcements to Oklahoma State and see the recent Wall Street Journal articles about how the checks never quite made it to OSU.
-----------------------------------
Dr. Dre Teams With Iovine to Donate $70 Million to USC
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-05-15/dr-dre-teams-with-iovine-to-donate-70-million-to-usc.html
Music producers Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine will donate $70 million to the University of Southern California to establish a center for arts and technology.
The donation will be used to create the Jimmy Iovine and Andre Young Academy for Arts, Technology and the Business of Innovation, USC newspaper the Daily Trojan reported on its website. Andre Young is the birth name of rapper and producer Dr. Dre.
What article was that regarding Pickens? I know an executive of the OSU Foundation pretty well so I would like to see what it says.
Quote from: Terror Skink on May 15, 2013, 11:25:05 AM
What article was that regarding Pickens? I know an executive of the OSU Foundation pretty well so I would like to see what it says.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323639604578370623393676546.html
U.S. NEWS Updated March 19, 2013, 4:36 p.m. ET
Pickens Loses Bid on Funds for School
By ANN ZIMMERMAN
Oil tycoon T. Boone Pickens has lost his battle to salvage a failed fundraising effort for his alma mater, Oklahoma State University.
A federal appeals court ruled Monday that Mr. Pickens and Cowboy Athletics, an OSU fundraising group, could not recover $33 million in premiums paid to an insurance company as part of a plan to raise money by insuring wealthy elderly alumni.
Oil tycoon T. Boone Pickens with Oklahoma State's basketball team earlier this month.
The suit stemmed from OSU's "Gift of a Lifetime" program, which involved taking out $10 million insurance policies on 27 supporters with Cowboy Athletics as beneficiary. OSU believed it would raise up to $250 million through the effort, betting that alums would die earlier than actuarial tables predicted.
But two years after Cowboy Athletics began paying the insurance premiums, and without receiving any death benefits, the fundraising group ran out of money and canceled the policies. It sued Lincoln, the general insurance agent and the insurance brokers, claiming it had been defrauded in the deal and was entitled to a refund on the policies.
U.S. District Judge Jorge A. Solis in Dallas ruled last year that Lincoln National Life Insurance Co. could keep premiums it received from the group. Lincoln claimed the school waited too long to cancel the policies and was not entitled to refunds.
The Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans affirmed that decision Monday, saying Mr. Pickens and Cowboy Athletics had sufficient warning from outside experts that the deal was risky.
"This was not Cowboy's first rodeo," the Fifth Circuit judges wrote in their decision.
A Lincoln spokesman said the decision "speaks for itself, and we look forward to putting this matter behind us."
Mr. Pickens didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. But his appellate lawyer, James Ho, said, "The primary goal of this lawsuit was to expose these investment strategies, and to ensure no charity is ever harmed by them again."
Mr. Pickens has donated about $500 million to OSU over the years, including $165 million to refurbish and expand the school's football stadium. He had plans to build several other sports facilities at the school and expected to fund them in part with the life-insurance proceeds.
Oh this. He didn't back out of any pledges though which is what I thought you meant.
This was something making the rounds a couple years ago. UW Athletics took a shot at this too, but I don't think nearly to this extent.
Quote from: Terror Skink on May 15, 2013, 07:19:46 PM
Oh this. He didn't back out of any pledges though which is what I thought you meant.
This was something making the rounds a couple years ago. UW Athletics took a shot at this too, but I don't think nearly to this extent.
He back out of the pledge in 2008 ...
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/21/sports/21boosters.html?em&_r=0
Financial Straits of Boosters Hit Athletic Programs Nearly three years ago, the billionaire oilman T. Boone Pickens donated $165 million to Oklahoma State's athletic department so it could remake its facilities into a Shangri-La for Cowboys sports, complete with an indoor practice center and new facilities for baseball, equestrian, soccer, tennis, and track and field. Pickens was so true to his school that he also allowed Oklahoma State to take out a $10 million insurance policy on his life.
Those funds, along with $37 million from other donors, were invested in BP Capital Management, a hedge fund controlled by Pickens. At the time, it looked like a windfall that would keep on giving. Instead, Pickens recently acknowledged that his investments had lost $1 billion this year amid the financial crisis.
Now, building on Oklahoma State's athletic village has been held up, and the athletic director, Mike Holder, said the project would have to wait until Pickens's financial situation improved. Holder and a spokesman for BP Capital declined to disclose the current value of the university's investment in Pickens's hedge fund.
Oklahoma State is hardly alone in watching its soaring ambitions crash back to earth with the fortunes of some of its biggest benefactors.
When Aubrey K. McClendon, the chief executive of Chesapeake Energy, recently announced that he had to sell some 32 million shares, or more than 5 percent of the company he founded, worth nearly $600 million, athletic officials at the University of Oklahoma were rattled. The bankruptcy proceedings of another energy company, SemGroup, has brought unwanted attention to the University of Kansas, where the company's ousted co-founder, Tom Kivisto, had pledged $12 million for a recently opened football complex.
Like the chief executives on Wall Street, leaders of collegiate athletic programs must acknowledge that the boom days of fund-raising have given way to belt-tightening.
"Adjustments have to take place and look bleak in the short term," said Joe Castiglione, Oklahoma's athletic director.
In 2006-7, for example, the nation's largest athletics departments and booster clubs raised more than $1.2 billion, according to a survey by The Chronicle of Higher Education. Some programs have more than tripled their annual gifts over the past 10 years. From 2002 to 2007, colleges in the six Bowl Championship Series conferences raised more than $3.9 billion through capital campaigns for new facilities, according to the survey.
Last May, McClendon and his wife, Kathleen, pledged $7 million to build a boathouse on the Oklahoma River for the women's rowing team and a housing facility near Memorial Stadium. Castiglione said he had spoken with McClendon, but he declined to say whether McClendon had given Oklahoma the money or intended to. Through a spokesman, McClendon declined to comment.
"It makes us concerned for everybody," Castiglione said. "It's something that we have to watch for everybody, because it's hitting people in ways they could have never predicted."
Even the University of Texas, which has the nation's top-ranked football team, is bracing for a downturn despite raising $35 million last year through annual giving, suites and premium seating. It also has a $29 million athletic endowment.
DeLoss Dodds, the university's longtime athletic director, recalled the perilous times that followed the 1987 stock-market crash.
"We worked with people," he said. "We absolutely worked with them on whatever commitments they were making or had been making.
"When things go bad and things get tough, people have to do realistic things, and we help them do that."
It is perhaps never as bad in Texas than it is in the rest of the country, because love for the Longhorns runs deep and backing them conveys a tremendous status. So Dodds said he was in no hurry to call in the commitments currently on the books, and he had a pretty good idea of how the penny-pinching would play out.
"We'll probably see it first in baseball, maybe, and then maybe in basketball," he said. "We've lost a couple of suite holders in basketball, and I think the economy is part of the reason there. I think people will hold on to their football stuff as long as they can."
Beyond patience, the ensuing months and years will also require diplomacy from athletic fund-raisers as they soothe the bruised egos of deep-pocketed donors, many of them who are enduring public embarrassment.
Not all of the nation's major boosters have the financial wherewithal or the élan of Pickens, whose book, "The First Billion is the Hardest," is a national best seller.
His spokesman, Jay Rosser, said Pickens had so far given more than $700 million to a variety of causes in the past five years.
"He looks forward to having a party to celebrate giving away $1 billion," Rosser said. "Unfortunately, the economic downturn has hit everyone hard, and Boone hasn't been immune. The chance of a party this year is next to none.
"Hopefully, the markets will improve soon and Boone can get back to the business of giving serious money. Boone likes making money, and he likes to give it away."
Kivisto, a former basketball star for Kansas, was removed as the chief executive of SemGroup in July and put on leave. Last week, Louis J. Freeh, the former F.B.I director, was appointed by a bankruptcy court to sort out how the company lost $2.4 billion on the New York Mercantile Exchange and to look into allegations that Kivisto's personal trading company in the oil futures market incurred $290 million of the losses.
It is unclear, however, if Kivisto has made good on the $12 million commitment to Kansas athletics. In 2006, the athletic department acknowledged that Kivisto had contributed $4 million and committed an additional $8 million to a new football complex.
It coincided with an announcement that the field inside Memorial Stadium would be renamed in his honor.
Lew Perkins, director of athletics at Kansas, said it was his policy not to publicly discuss the specifics about donors or donations.
"I will say that Tom has been a friend of this university for a long time," he said. "He has done everything for us and beyond."
Ultimately, however, it takes trust and toughness on the part of the benefactor and the athletic department to weather tight times. In the case of Oklahoma State and T. Boone Pickens, a sense of humor helps.
"Sure you're concerned about your investments, but I like the person we're investing with," Holder said. "I guess the good news is he had a billion dollars to lose."
How did he back out of a pledge? He donated the money and was dumb by getting the University to used his funds. He donated the money, never took anything out of it, and was planning to donate all the earnings. The guy donated hundreds of millions to the University. Really don't see why he is a bad guy just cause the investment lost money.
It was a tax dodge by Pickens .... He donated his own money to OSU provided they put it in his fund. That way he did not have to pay taxes on the gains, and could shelter his fees he pay himself off his own money from taxes. Good work if you can get it.
Then the financial world blew up in 2008 and when OSU went to withdraw some of the money from his fund, they were told they could not. Eventually the financial world got better and Pickens allowed some of his money withdrawn.
Pickens has been using OSU as a tax dodge for years.