He Has No Home, Just a Gulfstream Jet

Nicolas Berggruen doesn't have a home anymore. But don't pity him--he still owns a Gulfstream IV jet. He's a reclusive billionaire who has decided that he doesn't want to own a house any more. Or a car. So he lives in hotel rooms and does most of his work running his financial firms using a Blackberry while walking around Central Park. The story by Robert Frank was in last week's WSJ, and had a photo of him in the park's leafy confines, looking up and thinking about big issues. 'Living in a grand environment to show myself and others that I have wealth has zero appeal, " he told Frank.

The story talked about legacies...and how today's billionaires are trying hard to burnish them by creating foundations to solve big problems. Even younger rich want badly to do more than live in fancy homes, seeing how little that really brings them in actual happiness at the end of the day. Berggruen made his billions doing deals such as when he bought the foundering Foster Grant sunglasses company. He took it public for a huge gain. He's also a former owner of one of the largest media companies in Portugal...again it's been sold for more billions.

It was when he bought a giant grain ethanol plant in Oregon that he began seeing that much of the world's food production was being used for fuel. This prompted him to assemble a team of agricultural experts and begin his project to grow crops for food.

Now he is interested in helping the world grow more food. To that end, he's bought up hundreds of thousands of acres in Australia, where he plans to grow grains. He's working on more big land deals, and contemplating huge plantations of cassava, corn, rice, olives and other crops.

He reserves one indulgence that will be a big part of his legacy. He collects fine art. But since he's sold his lavish homes, they sit in storage, waiting for some day when a museum will be built to exhibit them.