MICHAEL JACKSON, CALL A FINANCIAL

MICHAEL JACKSON, CALL A FINANCIAL PLANNER! (Actually, the reverse is true. If I were still doing financial planning, I’d probably use this article as exhibit one about how a celebrity’s assets can go to hell–and beyond.)

Check these paragraphs out:

for the first time we can see how Jackson came to be in such tremendous debt.

For example, there is the widely discussed loan against the Beatles catalog. According to Lee, it was he who arranged for Bank of America/Nations Bank to loan Jackson $140 million in 1998. The bank required Jackson to put up his portion of Sony/ATV Music Publishing, which was then valued at $272 million.

In the middle of 1999, Lee says Jackson told him he’d gone through the $140 million and needed more money for his divorce settlement.

How does one man (person? eunuch? space alien?) go through $140 mil in a single year??

Coming soon: The MC Hammer/Michael Jackson bankrupted former multi-millionaire superstars tour!