He has been dubbed “the homeless billionaire” and “the man without a country.” Now Nicolas Berggruen, who enjoys one of the more bizarre lifestyles of the super-rich, is to stake part of his estimated $2.2 billion wealth on reviving the flagging fortunes of the Home of the Whopper. The tycoon, who has German roots but grew up in Paris, is using a London-listed investment vehicle, chaired by Lord Myners, to buy into Burger King. In tandem with a number of fellow billionaires, he plans to float the chain on the New York Stock Exchange. In the early years, Berggruen acquired fast cars, a private jet, works of art, an estate on an island off Florida and a swanky apartment in Manhattan. But as his wealth ballooned, he became disillusioned with the lifestyle. Twelve years ago he sold all his homes, loaned his art collection to museums (his father was friends with Pablo Picasso) and started living in hotels. The one luxury he considered “too practical” to sell was the jet. Asked to explain the life-changing moment, he once said: “I have always spent a lot of time in hotels, so it started to seem easier to do this, I feel happier. I am not that attached to material things.” Berggruen, 50, admits to carrying with him only a BlackBerry and a small bag of clothes. A slightly larger wardrobe is scattered around the world at a small number of hotels he temporarily calls home. He is known to stay at the Hotel Cipriani in Venice, New York’s Carlyle Hotel, the Peninsula in Beverly Hills and Chateau Marmont, in Los Angeles. Although his lifestyle means that he has never married or had children, like any billionaire playboy, he has been photographed at big society events with several models and actresses. He is also far from reclusive when it comes to dealing with the media. In one of his many interviews, he detailed his lifestyle. “Luckily, as a man you don’t need much,” he said. “I have very few possessions … a few papers, a couple of books, and a few shirts, jackets, sweaters.” He also explained his business philosophy as finding and investing in badly managed or financed companies with a solid underlying business model. But the tycoon, who spends much of his time in London, New York and California, also wants to make the world a better place. He put $100 million of his money toward setting up the Berggruen Institute, a think-tank to promote ideas on politics and constitutional reform, and another $25 million to promote radical ways to tackle California’s rising debt burden. Recognizing his lifestyle to be unusual, he once joked: “Luckily the whole world is not like me. Or else, there would be no world.”
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