Phil Anschutz

Philip Frederick Anschutz ( ; born December 28, 1939) is an American billionaire businessman who owns or controls companies in a variety of industries, including energy, railroads, real estate, sports, newspapers, movies, theaters, arenas and music. In 2004, he purchased the parent company of the Journal Newspapers, which under Anschutz's direction became the American conservative editorial newspaper ''Washington Examiner''.

Anschutz is the son of Fred and Marian Pfister Anschutz

In 1961, he bought out his father's oil drilling company, Circle A Drilling, and earned large returns in Wyoming. He invested in stocks, real estate and railroads. He expanded his investments to sports and entertainment companies, co-founding the American association football/soccer league Major League Soccer as well as multiple soccer teams, including the Los Angeles Galaxy, Chicago Fire, Colorado Rapids, Houston Dynamo, San Jose Earthquakes, and the New York/New Jersey MetroStars. Anschutz is the principal owner of the National Hockey League's Los Angeles Kings and is a minority owner of the National Basketball Association's Los Angeles Lakers. He also owns stakes in performance venues, including the Staples Center, The O2, London, and the Dignity Health Sports Park. Through his ownership of Walden Media, he has invested in films such as ''The Chronicles of Narnia'', ''Ray'', and ''Joshua''. Through AEG Live, he owns the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, Sea Island Resorts and The Broadmoor hotel in Colorado. He is also the namesake of CU Anschutz, the medical campus of the University of Colorado.

In 2021, ''Forbes'' ranked him the 66th richest person in the United States, with an estimated net worth of $10.1 billion.

Early life

Anschutz was born in Russell, Kansas, the son of Marian (née Pfister) and Frederick Benjamin Anschutz. His father was an oil tycoon and land investor who invested in ranches in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming, and eventually went into the oil-drilling business. His grandfather, Carl Anschutz, was an ethnic German who emigrated from Russia and started the Farmers State Bank in Russell. Anschutz grew up in Russell, as did Bob Dole. He also lived in Wichita, and Hays, Kansas. In later years, Anschutz contributed to Dole's political campaigns.

Anschutz graduated from Wichita High School East in 1957, and in 1961 earned a bachelor's degree in business from the University of Kansas, where he was a member of the Sigma Chi Fraternity.Contemporary Honors Award Recipient Philip Anschutz
, Kansas Business Hall of Fame, February 2000

Career

Land ownership

In 1970, Anschutz bought the 250,000-acre (1,000 km²) Baughman Farms, one of the country's largest farming corporations, in Liberal, Kansas, for $10 million. The following year, he acquired 9 million acres (36,000 km²) along the Utah-Wyoming border. This produced his first fortune in the oil business. In the early 1980s, the Anschutz Ranch, with its billion-barrel (160,000,000 m³) oil pocket, became the largest oil field discovery in the United States since Prudhoe Bay in Alaska in 1968. In 1982 Anschutz sold an interest in it to Mobil Oil for $500 million.

For several years, Anschutz was Colorado's sole billionaire. With his acquisition of land in other Western states, he became one of the 100 largest landholders in the United States.

Anschutz then moved into railroads and telecommunications before venturing into the entertainment industry. In 1999, ''Fortune'' magazine compared him to the 19th-century tycoon J.P. Morgan, as both men "struck it rich in a fundamentally different way: they operated across an astounding array of industries, mastering and reshaping entire economic landscapes."

Rail and petroleum businesses

In 1984, Anschutz entered the railroad business by purchasing the Rio Grande Railroad's holding company, Rio Grande Industries. In 1988, the Rio Grande railroad purchased the Southern Pacific Railroad under his direction. With the merger of the Southern Pacific and Union Pacific Corporation in September 1996, Anschutz became Vice-Chairman of Union Pacific. Before the merger, he was a director of Southern Pacific from June 1988 to September 1996, and non-executive chairman of Southern Pacific from 1993 to September 1996. He was also a director of Forest Oil Corporation beginning in 1995. In November 1993, he became Director and Chairman of the Board of Qwest, stepping down as a non-executive co-chairman in 2002 but remaining on the board. He has also been a director for Pacific Energy Partners and served on the boards of the American Petroleum Institute in Washington, D.C. and the National Petroleum Council in Washington, D.C.

In May 2001, the Bush administration upheld Anschutz's right to drill an exploratory oil well at Weatherman Draw in south-central Montana, where Native American tribes wanted to preserve sacred rock drawings. Environmental groups, preservationists, and ten Native American tribes appealed the decision without success. In April 2002, the Anschutz Exploration Corporation gave up its plans to drill for oil in the area. They donated its leases for oil and gas rights to the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which has pledged to let the leases expire, and the Bureau of Land Management said it had no plans to permit further leases there and would consider formal withdrawal of the 4,268-acre (17 km²) site from mineral leasing in its 2004 management plan. In recognition of its preservation efforts, The National Trust for Historic Preservation presented its President's Award to the Anschutz Exploration Corporation.

In May 2003, New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer reached a settlement with Anschutz after filing a civil complaint accusing Anschutz of accepting IPO shares from Salomon Smith Barney in exchange for Qwest's investment banking business. Anschutz denied any wrongdoing but volunteered to donate a total of $4.4 million to settle the case as long as he selected the recipient organizations in advance. Anschutz paid $100,000 to each of 32 New York nonprofit philanthropic groups, as well as $200,000 to each of six law schools. In return, Spitzer dropped his civil suit. The payment was roughly equal to his profit from the practice of IPO "spinning"; thus, he actually suffered no penalty. Spitzer's suit was panned in a ''Wall Street Journal'' editorial headlined "The Anschutz Ransom". The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the U.S. Department of Justice extensively investigated Qwest officials and determined there was no justification for taking action against any board member. The ''Denver Post'' summarized the implications for Anschutz: "Not only is Qwest founder and board member Philip Anschutz not a defendant in the long-awaited civil case against the regime of former Qwest chief executive Joe Nacchio, he doesn't even merit a mention in the 50-page complaint."

In February 2006, the Denver ''Rocky Mountain News'' reported that Anschutz would not run for reelection to the boards of Qwest and Union Pacific and would resign from the board of Regal Entertainment Group so as to focus on his other investments.

On June 24, 2008, it was announced that Anschutz would buy Xanterra Parks and Resorts, which had purchased the Grand Canyon Railway in 2007. In 2011, it was announced that Anschutz had purchased the Oklahoma Publishing Company, and as part of their assets The Broadmoor and the Manitou and Pike's Peak Railway in Colorado Springs and Manitou Springs respectively.

Effective August 1, 2010, Xanterra Parks and Resorts purchased and assumed management of Kingsmill Resort. Xanterra purchased the resort from Busch Properties, Inc. (BPI).

Entertainment – Anschutz Entertainment Group

The Anschutz Entertainment Group (AEG) is a sporting and music entertainment presenter and a subsidiary of The Anschutz Corporation

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