Billionaires Exposed

In the past six months, two ‘billionaire’ businessmen have been exposed and their deals and dealings aired in print and on TV. Dan Gilbert and Chris Ilitch, two high-profile, marquee names in the billionaire club, are facing more negative publicity about their wheeling and dealings than ever before.

Since the spring, Ilitch, the scion of his late father’s holdings, has come under more intense scrutiny than his father ever did. First,HBO’s Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel did a scathing report on the lack of progress in The District Detroit project and how a city, then going through the largest municipal bankruptcy in history five years ago, somehow found close to a billion dollars for, essentially, a new arena for the NHL’s Detroit Red Wings (and, eventually, the NBA’s Detroit Pistons).

The report found that the initial $300 million came from money earmarked for Detroit’s rapidly deteriorating schools. In 2013, under state control, the Detroit Public School District, once the nation’s largest, had shrunk down to less than an eighth of its peak enrollment in the mid-1970’s. From 750,000 to 40,000 in 40 years. Six years later, it is close to 30,000. It reflects the city’s exodus from the peak population of close to two million in the late 1950’s to today when less than 600,000 live there.

In the summer of 1959, after spending three years as a salesman, Mike Ilitch, a first-generation Macedonian-American who had played minor league baseball in the Detroit Tigers organization for two years following a stint in the Army, opened…