Dead Celebrity Alert

October 12, 1918 - August 30, 2008

The Birla industrial conglomerate, a household name for more than a century, is rooted in the old and the new India, spanning British India, the disastrous era of protectionist socialism in the first 45 years of independence and the introduction of economic liberalisation that has transformed a puny economy into a world player.

The man who started the business empire is part of Indian political and industrial history, Ghanshyam Das Birla. The man substantially responsible for taking that work into the stratosphere was Krishna Kumar Birla, a quiet-spoken, erudite, religious man with — for a tycoon — an uncommon interest in business ethics.

Known everywhere by the respectful Babu, meaning “boss” or “brother”, he was part of the massive expansion of the Birla empire in every corner of the Indian economy, including sugar, fertiliser production, heavy engineering, media and shipping. A famous flagship of the company, although economically irrelevant to it, is the Delhi-based Hindustan Times, one of India’s biggest dailies. … Read full obituary

Radio host and one-time Johnny Carson talk show rival Les Crane, who found later success as a software developer and publisher, has died at the age of 74.

Crane died Sunday of natural causes at a hospital north of San Francisco, according to his daughter, Caprice.

The New York-born Crane rose to fame in the 1960s as a late-night radio talk show host. For a time, he also hosted a TV talk show that rivaled The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. …

In 1964, he welcomed the Rolling Stones for the band’s first U.S. TV appearance and, the following year, had a rare TV visit from Bob Dylan. However, his guest list also included notable figures of the day such as civil rights leader Malcolm X and pro-segregation former Alabama governor and one-time presidential candidate George Wallace. … Read full obituary

October 4, 1917 - July 11, 2008

Roy M. Huffington was a struggling Texan wildcatter who struck it rich in the oil and gas reserves of Indonesia. He went on to become US Ambassador to Austria under President George H. W. Bush.

Bush, himself a former Texan oilman, was a long-time friend of Huffington who had been a significant sponsor of his political campaigns, and he succeeded where President Ronald Reagan had failed in persuading Huffington to become Ambassador to Austria in 1990 after he had sold his company for an estimated $600 million, according to Huffington. … Read full obituary

May 12, 1933 - April 12, 2008

David Kirby was, along with the first Sir Robert Reid, one of a distinguished group of able managers who ran British Rail during its most successful period in the 1980s and 1990s. A period commonly described nowadays in the professional, and sometimes even in the national press, as the Golden Age of the railways in this country. …

His fluency in French and German were to make him, at several stages of his career, a formidable ambassador and negotiator for British Rail in continental Europe. When president of the Railway Study Association he quickly learned sufficient Italian to give his speech at the conference dinner in Florence in the language of his hosts. … Read full obituary

Rocky Aoki, 69, a flamboyant businessman who parlayed his savings from an ice-cream truck into the international chain of Benihana Japanese steakhouses, known for the showmanship of their knife-tossing chefs, died July 10 in New York. In recent years, he said he had suffered from diabetes, hepatitis C and cirrhosis of the liver.

Mr. Aoki was an improbable success story who came to the United States from Japan on a wrestling scholarship and got his start in business by renting an ice-cream truck in Harlem, N.Y. He saved $10,000 from his ice-cream sales to open the first Benihana on New York’s West 56th Street in 1964. He quickly built it into an international corporation that, at its peak, had about 100 restaurants worldwide. …

Mr. Aoki led a complicated personal life, with multiple mistresses and illegitimate children. He once boasted that he had three children the same age, born to three different women. … Read full obituary

November 29, 1930 - June 13, 2008

The appointment in 1990 of Dennis Weatherstone as chairman and chief executive of J P Morgan, the largest bank in the US by market value, signalled not only radical change for the blue-blooded Wall Street institution but also the start of a new era for financial services.

He remained influential after stepping down as head of J P Morgan in 1994. Weatherstone acted as an independent adviser to the Bank of England and sat on the boards of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), General Motors and Merck among others. … Read full obituary

April 18, 1911 - May 19, 2008

Sybaritic heir to a grocery business fortune who squandered millions on doomed projects and was rescued from squalor

Huntington Hartford began life as one of the richest men in America but he wanted to be remembered for more than his money. In this he succeeded only insofar as he became celebrated for the ways he lost it — an extravagantly glamorous life with the stars of Hollywood’s golden age, a disastrous investment in the Bahamas and a much mocked attempt, through his own magazine and museum, to establish himself as a leader of the American art world.

George Huntington Hartford II was named after his grandfather, who co-founded the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co in 1869. By the time of Hartford’s birth in 1911, A&P was one of the most successful retailers in America. … Read full obituary

Robert Mondavi, the pioneering vintner who put California wine country on the global map, has died. He was 94.

Mondavi died peacefully at his home in Yountville, Calif., on Friday, said Mia Malm, spokeswoman for the Robert Mondavi Winery.

An enthusiastic ambassador for the health benefits of moderate consumption of wine, and of California wine in particular, Mondavi had travelled the world into his 90s, promoting the cultural and social benefits of wine.

Born in Virginia, Minn., Mondavi got an economics degree from Stanford University in California in the 1930s and went to work at the Charles Krug Winery, which his Italian-born parents had bought after moving to California from Minnesota. … Read full obituary

Jerry Zucker, a Charleston billionaire, a prolific inventor and a noted philanthropist, died Saturday at his home after a battle with cancer.

Forbes magazine often listed Zucker, 58, among the wealthiest Americans and the magazine placed his company, InterTech Group, on its list of the country’s largest private firms. …

In October, Forbes reported Zucker’s net worth exceeded $1 billion, but it wasn’t enough to land him on the magazine’s 2007 list of America’s richest people. He had made the list in past years. …

Zucker’s first major invention came as a high school science project: A Revolutionary Phase Factor for Colinear Electromagnetic Waves. The technology was used as part of the first lunar landing module. He went on to create more than 350 inventions that led to patents and commercially successful products. … Read full obituary

Ameriquest Mortgage founder Roland E. Arnall, 68, a billionaire who became a symbol of the subprime lending industry he helped create, died March 17 at the University of California at Los Angeles Medical Center. Esophageal cancer was diagnosed…

Mr. Arnall, a Holocaust survivor who co-founded the Simon Wiesenthal Center, had resigned as President Bush’s ambassador to the Netherlands on March 7, returning to Los Angeles to be with a seriously ill son who had Hodgkin’s disease.

Intensely private about his business and charitable affairs, Mr. Arnall built a real estate and financial services empire that transformed him into one of the nation’s wealthiest people, with his fortune estimated last year at $1.5 billion by Forbes magazine.

Once the nation’s largest subprime mortgage lender, Ameriquest was shadowed by accusations that it engaged in improper practices that included lying about borrowers’ income to qualify them for loans they couldn’t afford. Ameriquest advertised heavily on television, sent blimps soaring above stadiums bearing the company’s name and Liberty Bell logo and sponsored a Super Bowl halftime show and a Rolling Stones tour. …

A major supporter of Bush and Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Mr. Arnall and his second wife, Dawn, gave more than $12 million to GOP causes and candidates, becoming the heaviest donors to the 2004 election cycle, according to campaign finance records.

Mr. Arnall said he backed Bush because of his support for Israel. … Read full obituary

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Herb Peterson, who invented the Egg McMuffin as a way to introduce breakfast to McDonald’s restaurants, died Tuesday at his home in Santa Barbara, Calif. He was 89. …

Mr. Peterson came up with the idea for the menu item, the signature McDonald’s breakfast dish, in 1972. The Egg McMuffin made its debut at a restaurant in Santa Barbara that Mr. Peterson owned with his son, David Peterson. Modeled on eggs Benedict, it consists of an egg formed in a Teflon circle with the yolk broken, topped with a slice of cheese and grilled Canadian bacon. It is served on a toasted and buttered English muffin. … Read full obituary

March 23, 2008 — Al Copeland, a hard-charging, high-living entrepreneur who built an empire on spicy fried chicken and fluffy white biscuits, died Sunday in Munich, Germany, of complications from cancer treatment. He was 64. …

Born in poverty, Mr. Copeland burst onto the scene in 1972, when he opened his first Popeyes fried-chicken stand. The Arabi restaurant was the start of a franchise that, under his leadership, had 700 outlets, in the United States, Puerto Rico, Panama and Kuwait.

The money he earned led to public displays of opulence such as speedboats kept in a glass-walled showroom along Interstate 10 when he wasn’t racing them, a Lamborghini sports car parked outside his corporate headquarters and, of course, the massive Christmas displays that required sheriff’s deputies to direct the traffic outside his Metairie home. … Read full obituary

FULLERTON, Calif. — Carl Karcher, who turned a lone hot dog cart in Los Angeles into the Carl’s Jr. fast-food chain, died Friday at a Fullerton hospital, five days short of what would have been his 91st birthday, a spokeswoman said.

Karcher was admitted to St. Jude Medical Center in Fullerton on New Year’s Day, suffering from Parkinson’s-related pneumonia.

Born Jan. 16, 1917, in Sandusky, Ohio, Karcher moved to Anaheim where his uncle ran a small business. In 1941, Karcher and his wife Margaret, started their first business, a hot dog cart, in Los Angeles, borrowing $311 against their Plymouth and adding the $15 from Margaret’s purse, according to the 2002 book “Fast Food Nation.”

In 1945, they opened their first restaurant, Carl’s Drive-In Barbecue in Anaheim. … Read full obituary

NEW YORK — Steven T. Florio, former chief executive officer of Condé Nast Publications Inc., died Thursday due to complications from a heart attack. He was 58. …

Credited with growing Condé Nast and shaping its culture as a personality-driven star system, Florio stepped aside as CEO in January 2004, but remained under contract as vice chairman until last January. … Read full obituary

Dec. 26 (Bloomberg) — Michael Klein, the owner of California hedge-fund firm Pacificor LLC, his teenage daughter, Talia, and a pilot died after their private plane crashed near Panama’s tallest mountain.

Francesca Lewis, the 12-year-old friend of Klein’s daughter, who was 13, survived and is in the hospital with multiple injuries…

Lewis was found walking less than a kilometer from the site of the crash, 7,536 feet up on the eastern side of Volcan Baru, de la Hoz said. She was taken to a private clinic in David, Panama’s third-largest city, where she will meet her parents, he said. …

The hedge-fund manager started MIBEK Corp., a developer of financial-analysis software, in 1989 and sold the company in 1992. He then founded software company Transoft Networks Inc., which Hewlett-Packard Co. bought in 1999, according to the Pacificor Web site.

He subsequently became president and chief executive officer of eGroups Inc., the world’s largest group e-mail communication service. Yahoo! Inc. acquired that company for $450 million in 2000, Pacificor’s Web site says. … Read full obituary