I Stand Corrected

Found this piece this morning that says Michael Jackson's net worth in 2007 was $236 million. So he either died wealthy or spent a TON of money in two years (who knows, maybe he had stock losses too). That said, it seems unlikely that he ended up $400 million in debt, though the piece says he had little cash on hand and was known to go on lavish spending sprees, certainly not the picture of financial restraint.

Just wanted to set the record straight...

Comments

[John Z]

I'd like to see how much his estate earned in the past week in royalties from music sales and radio airtime!

[Josh Stein]

Though it's hard to feel bad for someone who had everything and lost most of it...that's exactly how I feel. Obviously a very tortured soul. He almost acted as if "okay, I wasn't allowed to be a kid growing up...so now that I can do as I wish, I'm going to be a kid again."

[Bob's Occasional Musings]

Some articles give his asset worth at $1 billion with $4-5 million in debts. While the debt is what makes the headlines, it is offset by the assets though in my limited experience, assets tend to be overstated in value.

[Matt G]

That $236 million probably isn't liquid - most likely tied up in thinks like the rights to all of the Beatles' recordings. If he was so flush, why would he have been selling so many of his possessions at auction for the last year and having problems paying people at Neverland?

[David]

I read that his estate will make more money from royalties over the next year than they did over the previous decade.

I'm guessing this doesn't include any releases of new material, such as a album/DVD of his last rehersal, or the new video he worked on, or any of the music he left to his children.

Also, it's worth noting that the net worth is what he claimed, and even if it was correct, shows that he was asset rich but cash poor.

[cmadler]

What I've heard is that he did have about $400 million in debts, but his assets exceed that by about $200-$250 million. The reason he had so much debt is that most of his assets were illiquid (as David wrote, he was asset rich but cash poor) so he had to borrow against them to spend anything.

[Jim]

Yeah it seems that when they said he died "$400M in debt" they should have said "with $400M in debts".

[Eugene Krabs]

Yeah, I've mentioned elsewhere (but not here) that his net worth was most likely deep in the black.

This article values the Neverland ranch at a much lower estimate than previous articles I've seen, but it also illustrates a more fundamental problem regarding his estate: That it's hard to valuate.

Nonetheless, after showing some napkin calculations, I think most will agree that while he have not have been a financial wizard, money was the least of his worries.

[Travis W.]

According to the Smoking Gun his estate is estimated to be worth more than $500 million.

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2009/0701091mjwill1.html?link=rssfeed

[guinness416]

Consdiering all the different figures people "have heard" just in this comments thread I think we can likely assume most of what's been written (and will be written) about this is garbage!

[Foobarista]

But the way his potential heirs are squabbling, there's definitely a whole lot of something worth squabbling over. If he had a negative $400M net worth, I doubt we'd see the massive scrum we're seeing.

[Mike Hunt]

I figured he had a very positive net worth- recall my comment on the day you posted the MJ thread.

Buying the music rights was a very smart business decision that outweighed his stupid spending. Ironically Paul McCartney suggested this idea to him and he turned around an outbid Paul to buy rights to the Beatles songs.... some friend! You can read about it on the Michael Jackson wikipedia page.

-Mike