Chris BishopBy Chris Bishop|August 6, 2021|4 Minutes|In Billionaire Watch

Billionaire Watch

Elon rocks with rockets.

South African born billionaire Elon Musk – famous for sending rockets into space – is about to become notorious for giving his weary workers a rocket, according to a new book.

According to a new book on the man: Power Play: Tesla, Elon Musk and the Bet of the Century – Musk was prone to tirades when facing complaints from his staff about overwork.

“I can be on my own private island with naked supermodels, drinking mai tais- but I’m not,” Musk shouted at his staff, the Times of London reported.

“I’m in the factory working my ass off, so I don’t want to hear about how hard everyone else in the factory works,” was another rebuke to a complaint of overwork.

When it came to putting in the hours in a plane, as well as a factory, Musk was no slouch.

The book claims that when Musk was in a relationship with Hollywood actress Amber Heard he used to fly to Australia, where she was filming, to spend a few hours with her before flying home.

From air travel to sea travel and Nigerian billionaire Wale Tinubu is celebrating being allowed to stay at the helm of his ship. The Securities Exchange Commission launched a case claiming infractions against Tinubu’s JSE-listed Oando oil operation and demanding his removal.

But the SEC agreed a settlement and a fine, leaving Tinubu at the head of the company he spent his life building. The share price soared.

It was all at sea for Tinubu in the early days. His first contract was to supply diesel by sea from Port Harcourt to Lagos. He was referred to a leaky, World War Two, tanker creaking at anchor. The crew hadn’t been paid for months and were more inclined to mutiny than more service at sea.

The young Tinubu negotiated a deal with the crew and, true to his word, returned with a back pack full of US dollars to pay the crew. True to their word, the crew delivered the oil to earn the foundation of the Oando fortune.

A not so sweet ending for Kenyan billionaire Narendra Raval who failed in a rescue bid for one of the country’s giant sugar manufacturers.

Mumias Sugar has been turning mountains of cane into the sweet stuff since the 1960s, but is suffering under a pile of debt.

Raval came to Kenya as a penniless priest before starting a small business that turned into a huge steel empire worth hundreds of millions of dollars. He used his business acumen to gather a bunch of investors to save Mumias with a plan to lease out the company’s assets on the way to wiping out debt.

But the plan didn’t find political favour and Parliament has ordered that the process for a new bidding exercise be restarted. Raval pulled out of the rescue deal in disgust. How sweet can turn sour.

Picture :  Maurizio Pesce from Milan, Italia, CC BY 2.0

<https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

“I can be on my own private island with naked supermodels, drinking mai tais- but I’m not,”