Daniel Ludwig

“So I had to republish an old episode, and I republished an old episode about this guy named Daniel Ludwig, who was the richest man in the world in the 19 eighties, and no one knew his name.”

“He let them use it, and he said later on that he made more money from that ship than all of his supertankers combined.”

“Daniel Ludwig, Invisible Billionaire. He was the richest person in the world, and no one knew his name. He paid a PR agency to keep his name out of the papers.”

“And he said that he made more money from his yacht than all of his super tankers combined.”

“At the beginning, there's an overview of the one time That Ludwig consented to be interviewed. It happened in 1957 when he was 60 years old. And this interview happens about 25 years before Forbes puts Ludwig as the richest person in the world.”

“When the book was published in 1986, Ludwig was estimated to be worth about three billion dollars.”

“The idea was to use other people's credit. First, he'd go to an oil company and persuade it to grant him a long-term charter to haul its petroleum. This done, he would go to a bank where using the charter as collateral, he would take out a loan to obtain a shi…”

“By the time he had stopped renovating old ships and started building his own, he had figured out that the one large ship could haul oil at, A lot more cheaply than two small ones. Therefore, it made sense to build bigger and bigger tankers so that he could cut…”

“At his peak. He owned over 200 companies in 50 countries.”

“He almost immediately recovered the purchase price price by gutting and selling off her machinery and her boilers and turning in her into an iron hold barge.”

“They are hauling oil, but he's making, during the mid to late twenties, he was actually made more money buying and selling ships than he did in operating them.”

“In some cases, now something that was just sitting there not only there was no charter on it, if you had to sell the ship to try to pay off your loan, maybe you'd get 50,000, a 100,000. Those now, those same ships are selling for 800,000 dollars or more.”

“The two name paper idea plus the fact that he's going to be shipping oil for Rockefeller equals Ludwig's wealth. Which then in turn causes him to go out and buy and start, you know, the hundreds of these businesses.”

“Why would an oil company in such an advantageous position charter ships from an outsider rather than operating ships of its own? The illusion of competition and decentralization has to be maintained. The U S government still had laws on the books dating from t…”

“Most of Ludwig's shipbuilding innovations were aimed towards a single goal, increasing payload without increasing cost. He was ever on the lookout for a way to reduce tanker design to the bare bones minimum. His ships had much thinner decks than the industry s…”

“So when he got a tempting offer, he wrote the maritime commission with a proposition. This company is offering to pay a 100,000 dollars for a turbine that he had just removed. Let me sell this engine, DK said, and I'll split the proceeds with you 50 50. On its…”

“Yachts and private planes are actually undervalued assets. In the case of the Greeks and in case of Ludwig, these giant floating company headquarter mansion things wind up not only not costing them anything, but making them a ton of money.”

“The salt output increased to as much as four million tons a year, making the largest producer of solar salt in the world.”

“And indeed, Ludwig, 19 months after buying the stock, would sell it for one hundred and forty six million dollars, reaping a handsome forty six million dollar profit on his short term investment.”

“It is much more accurate to regard Ludwig not as reclusive, but as exclusive. He sees only those few people he wants to see and avoids everyone else.”

“It's called The Invisible Billionaire Daniel Ludwig. Was the richest person in the world in the eighties, and no one knew who he was. He paid public relations firm to keep his name out of the papers.”