Expert Marin Boat-Namer Instantly Becomes
Multi-Billionaire
June 27 - Tiburon
If you've spent much time on the Sausalito
side of the Bay, at Ayala Cove, or the dock at Sam's Anchor Cafe
in Tiburon on Sundays, you've no doubt seen a loud and obnoxiously-operated
red cigarette-type boat roaring around, often with topless women.
Although we've often been embarrassed to admit it, we're good
friends with the owner, Richard 'Rick' Parasol of Tiburon, because
we've belonged to the same swim club for 25 years. In addition,
we've often talked boats, because in the '90s he bought a ketch
and cruised her - with topless women - round the Caribbean. She
was ultimately lost in a hurricane.
When we asked Rick how he came to name
his boat Rude, he laughed. "I showed it to my daughter
Ruth one day, and she said, 'Dad, that's so disgusting, it's
rude.'" Far from being insulted - Rick loves attention,
no matter if it's good or bad - that's what he named his boat.
And Rick operated the thing true to her name.
The name Ruth Parasol may ring a bell,
because today she became the wealthiest working woman in the
world, as PartyGaming PLC, the company she owns 40% of with her
husband, just went public on the London Stock Exchange for $8.48
billion. Yes, billion!
Thirty-eight-year-old Ruth and her husband's
share of that IPO was $3.3 billion - before the stock jumped
10% in early trading. To give you an idea of the money we're
talking about, PartyGaming is now worth more than British Airways.
As for Ruth Parasol, she's the wealthiest working woman in the
world. Number two is Doris Fisher of The Gap - who at 1.5 billion
is worth less than half of Parasol. As for Oprah Winfrey, you
may see her face everywhere, and she may give cars to her entire
audience, but she's small change at somewhere under a billion.
What makes it all very interesting is that
the U.S. government had said that PartyGaming PLC is in violation
of three federal statutes: the Interstate Wire Act, the Illegal
Gambling Business Act, and the Travel Act - because online gambling
is illegal in the U.S., and because 90% of PartyGaming's revenue
comes from U.S. residents. As such, all the principles are subject
to arrest and imprisonment. That's why the company isn't traded
on any of the exchanges in New York, and one of the reasons Ruth
is living in Gibraltar. Another is that taxes are low. This threat
from the U.S. government made estimates of PartyGaming's IPO
as low as $5 billion just two weeks ago, but investors obviously
didn't ultimately care.
As for 'Rick Rude', as he's known to us,
he apparently doesn't have any stock in the company. His daughter
had worked for and with him for several years, then they had
a bitter falling out over business. Rick told us they reconciled,
but perhaps not to the point of being business partners again.
According to the newspapers in the U.S.
and England, Rick made all his money in massage parlors in San
Francisco, and later on Internet sex sites. But that's not true.
Rick says he just owns a building in which there is a massage
parlor, and that his and Ruth's company didn't do the sex sites,
they just did the billing for them. But in the 20 or more years
that we've known Rick, he's always been affluent. We know he
started out making a lot of money developing apartment houses
for HUD, and still owns at least one big one.
In fact, while Rick can be rude and crude,
he does have a heart of gold. He was uncharacteristically down
in the dumps one day at the pool, so we asked him why. He explained
that he has a 200-unit or so apartment house in the South Bay
with working class tenants. He said he was upset because the
other person in the deal wanted to raise the rents just because
they could. "We've got all these tenants busting their asses
in low wage jobs just trying to pay their rent," he moaned,
"and this other person wants us to squeeze another $250,000
a year out of them. It makes me sick." This was about five
years ago.
Parasol spent last summer in the Med, cruising
around on a 90-ft motoryacht he'd just bought - with topless
women, of course - and on a jet he'd also just bought. In addition
to loving women and boats, Rick's always loved and owned planes.
We haven't seen Rick in about a month,
and at that time he was recovering from an infection contracted
during a knee operation. The infection had nearly killed him.
As for Rude, she's no longer berthed at Schoonmaker -
much to the delight of many of her more quiet neighbors.
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