Curated playlist
Private equity portfolio companies
- Ultimate Fighting ChampionshipThe UFC was bought in January 2001 for just $2 million. Fifteen years later, its sale price was $4.025 billion.
- Houghton Mifflin HarcourtHoughton Mifflin turned down Julia Child's French cookbook. Alfred A. Knopf published it in 1961 instead.
- ToppsTopps once dumped unsold Mickey Mantle cards into the Atlantic Ocean. Sy Berger rode the garbage boat out himself.
- Warner Music GroupWarner Music Group began because a Warner Bros. actor made money for a rival.
- Epic GamesEpic Games lost the last of its founding products in November 2013, when a man named Paul Sweeney packed and mailed the final copy of a game called ZZT. He was the father of Tim Sweeney, who had started a small company in his parents'…
- Le MéridienLe Méridien hotels began as a place for Air France crews to stay. The airline opened its first one in Paris in 1972.
- Le FigaroThe French newspaper Le Figaro took its name from a fictional barber. He was a sharp-tongued servant in a 1778 play.
- HootersHooters began as a joke that its own founders expected to fail. The American restaurant chain was incorporated in Clearwater, Florida, on the 1st of April 1983, and the date was chosen on purpose. April Fools' Day suited six local…
- Four Seasons Hotels and ResortsFour Seasons does not own any of its properties. It runs hotels for developers and owners.
- BenihanaBenihana began its American life in 1964 with a 25-year-old owner and a bankroll of ten thousand dollars. Hiroaki Aoki, known as Rocky, had earned that money driving an ice cream truck in Harlem. He put it into a small restaurant on West…
- Red LobsterRed Lobster counted 514 locations worldwide on the 13th of February 2025. They stretched across 44 US states and into Canada, Ecuador, Japan, Mexico and Thailand. Only a year before, in 2024, officials had described the same company as a…