Kirk Kerkorian (b. June 6, 1917 - June 15, 2015) was an Armenian-American billionaire and president/CEO of the modern incarnation of MGM, which today is still a motion picture studio as well as a resort properties corporation. Kerkorian wholly owned Tracinda Corporation, his private holding company based in Beverly Hills, California. Kerkorian is known as one of the important figures in shaping the city of Las Vegas, Nevada and the "father of the megaresort".

Once the richest resident of Los Angeles, he may have also been the most private. He almost never gaves interviews. He did not use credit cards. He did not have an e-mail account. He did not board commercial flights. He did not shop in retail stores. He did not make speeches. He did not accept awards. Even when he was being magnanimous--his charitable foundation has dispensed more than $100 million--he never allowed anything to be named in his honor. He did however eat out 3 or 4 times a week and played tennis every weekend, often with Alex Yemenidjian.

Net Worth in 2007 (Forbes Magazine) = $15 billion. Dropped to $4.2 billion at the time of his passing.

Kerkor "Kirk" Kerkorian was born in 1917 in Fresno, California to Ahron and Lily, Armenian immigrants. He is the youngest of 4 children. "Our first language, although we were born here, was Armenian," Kerkorian recalls. "We didn't learn the English language until we hit the streets." His father, an illiterate immigrant whom everyone called Villa (as in Pancho) on account of his oversize mustache, had become a paper millionaire during the great San Joaquin Valley raisin boom of World War I. Then recession of 1920-21 struck, and auctioneers liquidated his holdings. The young Kerkorian, under the tutelage of his older brother, became a fairly skilled amateur boxer but in 1939, he decided to learn how to fly airplanes.

The Kerkorians headed south, joining Los Angeles' urban poor. They landed first in Lincoln Heights, then the fringes of Jefferson Park, sometimes moving every few months when money was short. Kirk grew into a street-smart ruffian; he was expelled from Foshay Junior High for fighting, then sent to Jacob Riis, a downtown school for delinquent boys, before dropping out in the eighth grade. To help his parents Kirk began assembling a hustler's resume paperboy, golf caddie, steam cleaner, car refurbisher, furnace installer, amateur boxer (under the tutelage of his older brother Nish, also a boxer; Kirks nickname: "Rifle Right Kerkorian"), bouncer in a bowling alley bar. When he was 17 he lied about his age and joined the Civilian Conservation Corps, which sent him to cut fire trails in Sequoia National Park. During his boxing days, Kerkorian became the Pacific amateur welterweight champion.

When he was 25 he lied about his education and entered the Morton Air Academy in Blythe, where he earned the rank of lieutenant and became an army flight instructor. During World War II Kirk flew daredevil missions across the Atlantic for the Royal Air Force, delivering unarmed Canadian bombers to European bases for $1,000 a trip - trips many called suicide runs. After the war he became a soldier of fortune, scouring the globe for surplus planes, some of them less airworthy than others, and transporting them himself to the highest bidder.

In 1947, at the age of 30, he sank everything into Los Angeles Air Service, a small charter business that cost him $60,000. Californians were just awakening to the allure of Las Vegas, and Kirk hit it big by, shuttling celebrities, high rollers, elopers, and the occasional mobster to the 24-hour wedding chapels and casinos. He renamed the company Trans International Airlines, turning it into the first U.S. charter service with its own jet. He took it public in 1965. Armenian-Americans knew of Kerkorian and bought his stock. It rose from a low of $9.75 to a high of $32. "It brought the stock up to begin with, and then our earnings were great, too, and it kept going up until we sold to TransAmerica," says Kerkorian. In 1968 he sold out to the TransAmerica Corporation. In that 1968 deal, Kerkorian received about $85 million worth of stock in the TransAmerica conglomerate, making him its biggest shareholder.

In 1992 Kerkorian started MGM Grand Air, a super luxury airline that only flew LA-NY flights. Timing was bad as the extended recession caused the close of this airline in 1994.

• 1945 made his first visit to Las Vegas as a Cessna pilot.
• 1962 Kerkorian pulled off what Fortune magazine called "one of the most successful land speculations in Las Vegas' history." He bought 80 acres (320,000 sq m) across the Strip from the Flamingo for $960,000. The property was actually seperated from the Strip however by a narrow band of land belonging to another owner. "It was landlocked," says Kerkorian, "We traded the owners four or five acres for all of this thin strip that they could never build on." Caesars Palace contacted Kerkorian and rented it.
• 1967 bought 82 acres (330,000 sq m) of land on Paradise Road in Las Vegas for $5 million and built the International Hotel, which at the time was the largest hotel in the world.
• 1968 Sold Ceasars Palace land, having made $9 million on it in rent and sale price gains.
• 1969 Kerkorian's International Leisure also bought the Flamingo Hotel in order to train the staff of the soon to open International - poaching much of the management (33 people) from the Sahara.
• 1969 Built the worlds largest hotel at the time, the International (now the Las Vegas Hilton), which was 30 stories and 1,512 rooms. It was criticized before opening for being off the Strip. Kerkorian sold his Las Vegas home, his private plane and his yacht in order to build the hotel. "We opened that hotel with Barbra Streisand in the main showroom," says Kerkorian. "The rock musical 'Hair' was in the other showroom and the opening lounge act was Ike and Tina Turner. Elvis followed Barbra in the main showroom. I don't know of any hotel that went that big on entertainment."
• 1970-71 Sells two Las Vegas hotels to Hilton Hotels.
• 1973 (July 5) having purchased MGM, the famous movie studio, Kerkorian and MGM opened the original MGM Grand Hotel, which was the largest hotel in the world at that time (now that hotel is the Bally's). The new $107 million megaresort was named for a 1932 MGM film, "Grand Hotel." At 26 stories, the MGM Grand had 2,084 rooms, a 1,200-seat showroom and amenities like a shopping arcade, movie theater and jai alai fronton.
• 1980 November 11 the original MGM Grand burned in a fire that was the worst disaster ever in Las Vegas history, killing 85 people. MGM Grand reopened after only 8 months.
• 1986 Kerkorian sold the MGM Grand hotels in Las Vegas and Reno for $594 million to Bally.
• 1987 Agrees to buy the venerable Desert Inn and Sands hotels on the Las Vegas Strip from Summa Corp.
• 1993 Built the present MGM Grand Hotel, which has 5,000 rooms, eight restaurants, a health club, a monorail, the 15,000-seat MGM Grand Garden and a theme park as big as Disneyland when it opened in 1955. It was also the largest hotel in the world when it opened.
• 2000 MGM Grand buys Mirage Resorts for $4.4 billion.
• 2004 MGM Mirage announces it will buy Mandalay Resort Group, dramatically increasing Kerkorian's investment on the Las Vegas Strip.
• 2007 Kerkorian offers to take about $12 billion of MGM Mirage's assets private with his privately held Tracinda Corporation. Analysts think this could be the first step in a complete buyout.
• 2008 (December) - MGM Mirage to sell Treasure Island for $500 million[1]

Spun off from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, MGM Mirage owns and operates many properties, including the Bellagio, MGM Grand, the Mirage, Excalibur, Luxor, Mandalay Bay, Treasure Island, New York-New York, CityCenter and the Boardwalk in Las Vegas, as well as the Beau Rivage Casino in Biloxi, Mississippi[2].

(see Business Week - November 2, 1974 for how he financed all of this)

In 1969, Kerkorian began buying MGM stock and by the end of the year had working control of the company. He immediately appointed James T. Aubrey, Jr. MGM's president. He downsized the struggling MGM and sold off massive amounts of historical memorabilia, including Dorothy's ruby slippers (from The Wizard of Oz), and several acres of MGM's backlots (which were razed to build houses). Kerkorian sold MGM's distribution system in 1973, and gradually distanced himself from the daily operation of the studio. In 1979, Kerkorian issued a statement claiming that MGM was now primarily a hotel company; however, he also managed to expand the overall film library and production system with the purchase of United Artists in 1981. In 1986 he sold the studios to Ted Turner.

Turner kept ownership of the combined MGM/UA for exactly 74 days. Both studios had huge debts and Turner simply could not afford to keep them under those circumstances; to recoup his investment, he sold all of United Artists and the MGM trademark back to Kerkorian. The studio lot was sold to Lorimar, which was later acquired by Warner Bros.; in 1990, the lot was sold to Columbia Pictures, in exchange for the half of Warner's lot they'd rented since the 1970s. Also in 1990, the MGM studio was purchased by Italian financier Giancarlo Parretti, but Parretti defaulted on the loans he'd used to buy the studio and sold the studio back to Kerkorian in 1996.

Longtime romance with MGM movie studio now over: 3-time studio owner closed $5 billion deal with Sony, 3 private-equity firms and cable giant Comcast in April, 2005; netted $1.8 billion.

Kerkorian first entered into the world of cars with Chrysler, which he bought a large stake in, eventually reaching nearly 15%. He tried to buy the company outright, but the board blocked his efforts only to allow Mercedes (Diamler Benz) to buy the company later. Kerkorian sued DiamlerChrylser for misrepresenting the deal as a merger of equals, rather than an acquisition.

In May 2005, Kerkorian increased his stake in General Motors (GM) to 9.5%. In September 2005, he announced his intent to place someone on the GM Board of Directors. York (from Chrysler) was eventually placed, and he resigned in October 2006 to protest the fact that GM was rejecting an offer Kerkorian was promoting to have GM work more closely with Nissan/Renault. Kerkorian also announced at that time he would not be purchasing additional shares which he had filed with the SEC his intentions to. GM stocks slipped 7% on this news. GM refused Kerkorian's proposal to work closely with Renault, leading Kerkorian to divest himself of all his shares.

Kerkorian's Tracinda Corporation, which attempted to buy Chrysler in 1995 for $22.8 Billion, but was unsuccessful when Chrysler merged with Diamler-Benz in 1998, offered again on Thursday, April 5, 2007 to buy Chrysler. This time the offer, which is one of several others, was valued at $4.5 billion in cash, plus taking on billions in future obligations. The offer was rejected as another offer to take Chrysler private won out.