Thursday, January 19, 2012

A very special foreign talent 1


Robert Friedland born in Chicago, Illinois, USA, on August 18 1950,  lives in Singapore and runs Ivanhoe Capital from here. According to wikipedia, Robert Martin Friedland, also known as "Toxic Bob", is an international financier and major player in the junior mining industry...... He is the founder and Chairman of his private, family-owned firm, Ivanhoe Capital Corporation,...... and Chief Executive Officer of Ivanhoe Mines — a Canadian public company listed on the New York, NASDAQ and Toronto exchanges. Robert Friedland's net worth is estimated at $2.8 billion by Forbes Magazine.

Very few other than miners would heard of this man, before Steve Jobs published his memoir.

Drug Trafficker
Robert's dad was a survivor of Auschwitz, who later became successful in the construction industry in Chicago. Bob, a charismatic young student, got an early start in dubious trafficking at Bowdoin College in Maine in the late 1960s, where he ran an LSD smuggling business out of a college dormitory until he was busted by local undercover cops. He was found with 24000 tablets of LSD worth USD 125000 in value.

Boss of Student Union
He went to Reed College in 1972. Immediately, he stand and was successfully elected for student union leader. The theme of his rally was to seek justice from the unfair judgement he received (for drug trafficking).

Jobs and Friedland and their first rendezvous
According to Jobs memoir, he first met Friedland when he decided to sell his IBM typewriter as he needed some cash, during the days of Reed College. Job brought his wares to the room of the buyer saw that guy was -- screwing a girl. While Steve Jobs started to leave, the buyer invited Jobs for a sit and to wait for him finish his screw job.

That buyer was Robert Friedland.

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