Byline: By danny hakim section: Section B; Column 0; Metropolitan Desk; Pg. 1 Length

URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: MORTGAGE BANKING & FINANCE (90%); ORTHOPEDICS (90%); SURGERY & TRANSPLANTATION (90%); FOOD INDUSTRY (89%); TELEVISION INDUSTRY (87%); AIRLINES (85%); SPORT UTILITY VEHICLES (79%); PICKUP TRUCKS (79%); PHYSICIANS & SURGEONS (78%); COMPANY EARNINGS (78%); PROSTHETICS & ORTHOTICS (78%); INTERIM FINANCIAL RESULTS (78%); COMPANY PROFITS (76%); DIVESTITURES (76%); HOUSING MARKET (76%); FOOD & BEVERAGE SECTOR PERFORMANCE (76%); CABLE INDUSTRY (76%); MORTGAGE BANKING (76%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (76%); BANK FAILURES (75%); HEALTH CARE INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY (73%); CHILDREN'S PROGRAMMING (71%); BEVERAGE INDUSTRY (71%); TELEVISION PROGRAMMING (71%); AGRICULTURAL PRICES (70%); LAYOFFS (69%); AUTOMOTIVE MFG (69%); MOTOR VEHICLES (69%); UTILITY VEHICLE MFG (69%); BONDS (69%); AUTOMAKERS (69%); FOOD & BEVERAGE TRADE (68%); AIRPORTS (67%); BOND MARKETS (66%); TELECOMMUNICATIONS SERVICES (65%); FOOD & BEVERAGE (65%); BEVERAGE MFG (64%); TALKS & MEETINGS (63%); FIBER OPTICS (60%); MORTGAGE LOANS (56%)
COMPANY: GENERAL MOTORS CORP (54%); EASTERN AIR LINES INC (53%); EMIRATES GROUP (53%); VERIZON COMMUNICATIONS INC (51%); TYSON FOODS INC (50%); KRAFT FOODS INC (50%)
TICKER: GMP (PAR) (54%); GMB (BRU) (54%); GM (NYSE) (54%); VZC (LSE) (51%); VZ (NYSE) (51%); TSN (NYSE) (50%); KFT (NYSE) (50%); VER (SWX) (51%)
INDUSTRY: NAICS336112 LIGHT TRUCK & UTILITY VEHICLE MANUFACTURING (54%); NAICS336111 AUTOMOBILE MANUFACTURING (54%); NAICS517210 WIRELESS TELECOMMUNICATIONS CARRIERS (EXCEPT SATELLITE) (51%); NAICS517110 WIRED TELECOMMUNICATIONS CARRIERS (51%); SIC4813 TELEPHONE COMMUNICATIONS, EXCEPT RADIOTELEPHONE (51%); NAICS311615 POULTRY PROCESSING (50%); NAICS311611 ANIMAL (EXCEPT POULTRY) SLAUGHTERING (50%); SIC2048 PREPARED FEEDS & FEED INGREDIENTS FOR ANIMALS & FOWLS, EXCEPT DOGS & CATS (50%); SIC2015 POULTRY SLAUGHTERING & PROCESSING (50%); NAICS311991 PERISHABLE PREPARED FOOD MANUFACTURING (50%); NAICS311821 COOKIE & CRACKER MANUFACTURING (50%); NAICS311513 CHEESE MANUFACTURING (50%)
PERSON: GEORGE LOPEZ (54%)
GEOGRAPHIC: CALIFORNIA, USA (90%) UNITED STATES (92%); EUROPE (79%); MIDDLE EAST (73%)
LOAD-DATE: July 29, 2008
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: PHOTO
DOCUMENT-TYPE: Summary
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

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The New York Times
July 29, 2008 Tuesday

Late Edition - Final

Find an Undervalued Asset. Fix It Up. Flip It. (Now It's Web Sites, Not Houses)
BYLINE: By ABHA BHATTARAI
SECTION: Section C; Column 0; Business/Financial Desk; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 1231 words
Dave Hermansen did not own a bird or a cage when he bought bird-cage.com, an online store, for $1,800 three years ago. He simply saw a Web site that was ''very, very poorly done,'' and begged the owners to sell it to him. He then redesigned the site, added advertising and drove up traffic. Last December, he sold it for $173,000.

Mr. Hermansen, 30, is among the latest wave of entrepreneurs who, like the day traders and real estate investors before them, are looking to make a lot of money without much effort.

They use little more than home computers and free software to buy Web sites that appeal to a small and specific niche. Then they fix up the sites with hopes of reselling them for far more than they paid.

But while their dreams are fueled by high-profile Internet deals -- Conde Nast's $25 million purchase of Wired News, People.com's acquisition of Celebrity Baby Blog and, most recently, a deal this month between Guardian News and Media and the owner of PaidContent for a reported $30 million -- these entrepreneurs have smaller ambitions for their sites. Many end up settling for just hundreds, sometimes thousands of dollars.

''Everyone with a site is saying, 'If I can get it to the right value, I'm out,' '' said Gene Alvarez, vice president for research at Gartner, a technology consulting firm. ''I call it the burger-flipping model: You build up volume, you build a community and then you try to sell it while it's still hot.''

Some Web sites begin as labors of love. Take Celebrity Baby Blog, which Danielle Friedland, the creator, has said she created after reeling off facts during the 2004 Golden Globes ''about who was pregnant with twins or had recently given birth.'' Four years later, People.com bought the Web site after it noticed an unfulfilled niche: ''a very passionate community of young moms,'' said Fran Hauser, president of People Digital.

Ms. Hauser said she would not comment on the sale price. Industry insiders speculate it was in the low millions.

Most flippers aim a bit lower. They troll the Internet for sites that, according to Mike Lyon, an investment banker at Arbor Advisors, are ''undervalued property'' -- poorly designed, with little visibility on the Web.

While there is no data on how many people flip Web sites, the number of sites sold on eBay has doubled over the last three months, the company said. At SitePoint's marketplace, a similar forum where users can auction off Web sites, sales have quadrupled in the last year, said Matt Mickiewicz, a founder of the site.

The changing economics of the Web have made it easier to find and exploit niche communities on the Internet. The Internet boom of the 1990s spawned companies like Pets.com that were Web versions of brick-and-mortar stores. They required stockpiling products and shipping them to customers. But that model came crashing down with the Web bust of 2000.

Since then, building niche Web sites and small-scale online stores has become cheap and easy. Free software, advertising systems like Google's, and ''drop shipping'' services that allow Web site owners to handle products through a third-party supplier, have lowered the cost of doing business.

Instead of selling goods and services, analysts said most flippers are looking into the easiest way to make a quick buck, by tapping into specialized advertising.

Philip Kaplan, who captured attention with a Web site that rejoiced in the unraveling of the dot-com bubble, now helps sites secure online advertising through his company AdBrite. He said in an interview that he has been encouraging site owners to ''carve out a focused niche.''

''All of our advertisers are saying, 'We want this niche or that niche,' '' he said. ''They never say, 'We want to advertise on a site about nothing.' ''

Mr. Hermansen, of bird-cage.com, says he is always looking for areas on the Internet with high search volume and little competition.

''Once I found the bird niche, I knew it was where I wanted to be,'' he said.

Before bird cages, Mr. Hermansen owned -- and sold -- niche Web sites about paintball, remote-control toys and electric scooters. In 2005, he quit his job as a draftsman to flip Web sites full time.

''It used to be that if you had a site worth a million dollars, you'd hire an investment bank or a broker to sell it,'' Mr. Mickiewicz, of SitePoint, said. ''But if you had one that generated less than that, you'd just have to sit on it. Now you can sell anything for any sort of profit, whether it's $20 or $220,000.''

The average selling price of Web sites on eBay was $78 last month. There, sites for sale range from online stores specializing in gift baskets and patio grills to message boards and forums devoted to the online game World of Warcraft and deep sea fishing. The marketplace at SitePoint offers sites about chicken recipes, bonsai trees and hiking stories. ''Low-maintenance content sites'' like blogs, online communities and directories are the most popular, Mr. Mickiewicz said, adding that a Web site's selling price is generally one to three times the value of its annual revenue.

Peter T. Davis, who calls himself a ''Web property developer,'' said he owns about 20 Web sites, including message boards about model railroads and coin collecting.

Mr. Davis said he generally holds onto Web sites for at least a few months before flipping them. Sometimes, though, the process is much quicker -- like the time he bought a forum about day care centers for $1,500 and sold it six hours later for $3,500.

''I used to make my own Web sites and sell them, but then I realized, 'Hey, this is much easier than making them,' '' he said. ''It's as simple as buying a Web site from someone and making it more attractive. It's about creating value where there was none.''

Creating the value, though, is the tricky part. Many Web site flippers said they begin by tweaking a site's template and making other superficial changes like adjusting fonts, colors and type sizes. After that, they manipulate a Web site's structure, coding and presentation so it shows up more prominently in Web searches.

In an era when Web use is increasingly search-driven, making sure people find your site makes all the difference, Mr. Hermansen said. ''Once you beef up traffic, everything else just happens,'' he added.

Consumer protection groups warn potential buyers. Traffic generators and click fraud can easily exaggerate Web site traffic. Web site owners can inflate revenue statistics and tamper with search engine rankings.

''It's an increasing law enforcement challenge,'' said Lois C. Greisman, associate director for marketing practices at the Federal Trade Commission. ''It's hard to measure fraud on the Internet, but this is just a variation on the classic get-rich-quick scheme.''

Last year, Mr. Hermansen said he did something he had wanted to do for years: he bought a parrot, Sunny. Earlier this month, Mr. Hermansen and his brother, Mike, set up a warehouse and started manufacturing and selling their own line of bird cages.

Now Sunny lives in one of the cages in the Hermansens' warehouse and is the mascot for their newest Web site, InnovativeCages.com. Mr. Hermansen said he has found yet another Internet void to fill: ''the high-end, high-priced luxury cage niche.''

''Of course,'' he added, ''the eventual goal is to sell the site for a good chunk of money.''
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: WEB SITES (90%); INTERNET RETAILING (89%); INTERNET & WWW (89%); BLOGS & MESSAGE BOARDS (78%); INTERNET AUCTIONS (77%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (76%); REAL ESTATE INVESTING (75%); AUCTIONS (75%); REAL ESTATE (71%); TWINS & MULTIPLE BIRTHS (67%); PREGNANCY & CHILDBIRTH (67%); PERSONAL COMPUTERS (70%); COMPUTER SOFTWARE (72%)
LOAD-DATE: July 29, 2008
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: PHOTO: Dave Hermansen, right, and his brother Mike at work on the Web site, InnovativeCages.com.(PHOTOGRAPH BY PAUL HOSEFROS FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES)(pg. C8)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

541 of 1231 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times
July 29, 2008 Tuesday

The New York Times on the Web

Fire Destroys Historic English Pier
BYLINE: By GRAHAM BOWLEY
SECTION: Section ; Column 0; Foreign Desk; Pg.
LENGTH: 629 words
A fire on Monday devoured a historic seaside pier that stretched nearly a quarter of a mile into the sea and was an iconic destination for English holidaymakers for more than a century.

The pier, the Grand at Weston-super-Mare in western England -- Britain's ''pier of the year'' in 2001 -- was already on its second life, having been destroyed by fire in 1930. It reopened in 1933.

The pier, one of the town's chief tourist attractions, was a celebrated part of English seaside tradition of promenades, amusement rides and fish and chips.

''It is a tragedy,'' said Nigel Heath a spokesman for the pier company. ''It epitomized the English seaside resort.''

No one was injured in the fire, the authorities said. According to the British media, suspicion for the cause of the blaze centered on a deep fat-fryer in kitchens at the sea end of the pier, although the police said their investigations were ongoing. A local fire officer, Kevin Pearson told the Daily Mail newspaper, ''We believe the fire to have started in a kitchen area and it could have been a chip pan.''

Film footage on the BBC showed flames ravaging the two-story white walled pavilion at the end of the pier and dense grey clouds of smoke rising up into the blue summer sky over the small seaside town.

The fire was first reported about 6:46 a.m., according to James Bladon, a spokesman for the Avon Fire and Rescue Services. He said at the height of the blaze 13 fire engines and 100 firefighters were at the scene.

''The area where the fire broke out was a commercial kitchen and that will be one strand of the investigation,'' he said. ''The building itself has been completely destroyed. There is nothing left.''

The pier had been busy in the past couple of days, he said. ''We've had a couple of nice summer days so it was busy yesterday.''

The footage showed that within about two hours, the flames had reduced the pavilion -- which was mostly wood -- to cinders, although the part of the pier closer to the shore remained intact and the underlying metal structure survived.

Although long, the Grand pier is not in the top 10 of Britain's longest piers, according to the National Piers Society. That honor belongs to the pier at Southend-on-Sea, which is 7,080 feet long.

The pier received official historical protected status in 1979, and was honored in 2001 by Britain's National Piers Society. The society was founded in 1979 by the poet Sir John Betjeman ''to promote and sustain interest in the preservation and continued enjoyment of seaside piers.''

''At the turn of the last century almost a hundred piers existed: now only half remain and several face an uncertain future,'' the society says on its Web site.

The Grand pier was bought by an entrepreneur, Kelly Michael, in February and re-opened in April. According to Mr. Heath, Mr. Michael had invested nearly $2 million to ''put in a new go-cart track, the first of its kind in Britain, a climbing wall for youngsters, a pub, the first time a pub has been on the pier since it opened.''

Elaine Parker, who lives in Weston-super-mare, told the BBC: ''What a scene -- the smoke was hundreds of feet in the air. It was very emotional for all the locals.''

Later, Mr. Michael said in a statement: ''We regarded ourselves as custodians rather than owners, just looking after it for future generations to enjoy. For this tragic event to have taken place during our watch is truly devastating.I feel very sorry for our dedicated staff, many of whom have been on the pier all of their working lives.They treasured the pier, in particular the main pavilion, and I don't know how they will come to terms with its sad loss.'' He said he would ''work tirelessly to restore this magnificent structure to its former glory.''

URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: FIRES (90%); LEISURE TRAVEL (90%); COASTAL AREAS (89%); DESTINATIONS & ATTRACTIONS (73%); INVESTIGATIONS (72%); RESORTS (71%); AMBULANCE & RESCUE SERVICES (64%)
GEOGRAPHIC: ENGLAND (92%); UNITED KINGDOM (92%)
LOAD-DATE: July 29, 2008
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

542 of 1231 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times
July 29, 2008 Tuesday

Late Edition - Final

Paid Notice: Deaths WHITEHEAD, CLAY T
SECTION: Section B; Column 0; Classified; Pg. 6
LENGTH: 71 words
WHITEHEAD--Clay T. The Trustees and staff of Hudson Institute mourn the passing of Trustee Clay T. ''Tom'' Whitehead. We pay tribute to his legacy of entrepreneurship as a seminal figure in the satellite television broadcast industry and in public service as Special Assistant to President Nixon and as the first Director of the Office of Telecommunications Policy at the White House. Allan R. Tessler, Chairman, Hudson Institute
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: DEATHS & OBITUARIES (88%); TELECOMMUNICATIONS (86%); COMMUNICATIONS REGULATION & POLICY (84%); SATELLITE TELEVISION (84%); COMMUNICATIONS LAW (84%); ENTERTAINMENT & ARTS (84%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (84%); US PRESIDENTS (83%); BROADCASTING INDUSTRY (54%)
ORGANIZATION: HUDSON INSTITUTE (91%)
PERSON: RICHARD NIXON (57%); DAVID DAVIS (52%)
LOAD-DATE: July 31, 2008
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
DOCUMENT-TYPE: Paid Death Notice
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

543 of 1231 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times
July 28, 2008 Monday

Late Edition - Final

A Stealth Media Powerhouse
BYLINE: By TIM ARANGO
SECTION: Section C; Column 0; Business/Financial Desk; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 2409 words
Over the Fourth of July weekend at the billionaire Ronald O. Perelman's 57-acre East Hampton estate the Creeks, Vivi Nevo was in his element.

Mr. Nevo, with his fiancee, the megawatt Chinese actress Zhang Ziyi (the star of ''Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon''), sitting on his lap, watched Jon Bon Jovi give an impromptu performance before taking a turn on the dance floor to Dave Mason's ''Feelin' Alright.''

A wind-up doll of kinetic energy, who bounds about like a shortstop, Mr. Nevo, who is 43, is said to be the largest individual shareholder of Time Warner, was once the largest private investor in Goldman Sachs, is engaged to China's most famous actress, vacations on Rupert Murdoch's sailboat, is the godfather of Lachlan Murdoch's son, counts Lenny Kravitz as a good friend and attended Madonna's wedding in 2000.

And many people, including even some of his close friends, a few of whom joined him at Mr. Perelman's estate over the Fourth of July -- and spoke about the party anonymously because it was a private event -- have no idea what his background is or how exactly he made his fortune.

Twenty years or so ago, Vivi Nevo, his first name a nickname for Aviv, was living in a studio apartment in the Concorde building on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Today he is the media industry's Zelig, often referred to among his media friends as ''the international man of mystery.''

''He is everywhere, all the time, like no one I have ever seen,'' said Graydon Carter, the editor in chief of Vanity Fair, which frequently hosts Mr. Nevo at its high society parties.

Who is Mr. Nevo? An Israeli who took a modest inheritance from his family and parlayed it into a sizable fortune through savvy investing, much of it in media and Internet companies -- and into connections in the media world.

Behind the scenes, his influence on the media industry is subtle. For upstart Internet companies, he has been an important broker of relationships with traditional firms; and for Time Warner, in particular, he was an advocate, when the Yahoo takeover battle erupted, of trying to assemble a three-way partnership among Yahoo, Microsoft's MSN and Time Warner's AOL.

Of all the characters the media business attracts -- and creates, for that matter -- perhaps no one is more remarked upon, wondered about or marveled at than Mr. Nevo. Among his many overlapping circles of friends, nearly all say that Mr. Nevo is a force in their lives: a loyal friend, a trusted conveyor and keeper of information and someone who never forgets a birthday or a bar mitzvah.

''He's someone I've really liked,'' said John J. Mack, the chief executive of Morgan Stanley, who met Mr. Nevo several years ago while he was at the helm of Credit Suisse. ''I trust him. He's got great instincts for the business.''

Gordon Crawford, senior vice president and a director of Capital Research and Management and one of the best-known media investors, met Mr. Nevo around 10 years ago and the two became close. This month they flew together to Sun Valley, Idaho, for the investment bank Allen & Company's annual media conference. ''I don't know anyone who's worked harder at developing contacts,'' Mr. Crawford said. ''It's definitely more than social. I think he's a pretty astute observer of what's going on in the media.''

Mr. Nevo has an uncanny ability to network and a knack for putting himself in the right place at the right time.

In the spring of 1999, John Thornton, who was then president of Goldman Sachs, was in Los Angeles for the bank's road show before it went public, and after giving a presentation, he sat down. ''The guy sitting next to me was Vivi Nevo, and we just started talking and developed a nice rapport right then.'' Later, Mr. Thornton became an adviser to Time Warner. ''So I dealt with him a lot there,'' Mr. Thornton recalled. ''He was very active in talking with management. I can't think of anyone who is principally a private investor who is that focused on one industry.''

Mr. Nevo's discretion, combined with a lack of a paper trail, equates to a constant chirping of questions in the media industry about his back story.

''He's a great character, so that draws attention to him,'' said Lachlan Murdoch, explaining the growing fascination that people in the media business have about Mr. Nevo. ''He's also a very private individual.

''When I moved back to Australia'' -- after leaving the News Corporation, where his father is chairman, in 2005 -- ''we spoke a lot. He's been a friend through thick and thin.''

Those who knew Mr. Nevo in the 1980s, after he moved to New York from Israel, have watched his rise with curiosity.

''You're asking questions I've asked myself many times,'' said Nicolas Rachline, who met Mr. Nevo in the late 1980s when both were part of a fashionable New York expatriate crowd that hung out at Le Bilboquet, a French restaurant on the Upper East Side. ''What the hell does Vivi do? He seems to be a powerful player in the entertainment industry. How, I don't know.''

Mr. Perelman met Mr. Nevo years ago on the Los Angeles social scene -- either at Barry Diller's or at the house of a Creative Artists Agency partner, Bryan Lourd, he said -- and the pair's relationship is purely social. ''There's no business element,'' Mr. Perelman said. ''It's purely social, but it's a deep social. He's around my family, I'm around his fiancee. We take a lot of trips together.''

The glittery social world that Mr. Nevo inhabits is secondary -- and the byproduct of -- what is the core of his professional existence: a sizable stake in Time Warner he has maintained for years, apparently with impeccable, buy-and-sell timing. Mr. Nevo, through his firm NV Investments, has never owned 5 percent or more of the company, which would require public disclosure, but it is widely believed in the industry that he is the largest private shareholder; Mr. Nevo himself often says so.

A Time Warner spokesman said that Mr. Nevo is a shareholder but could not verify the size of his holding. But Mr. Nevo does have, and has had for years, the ear of management.

Mr. Nevo, whose workaday uniform is snug, black Christian Dior suits, has a particularly close relationship with Richard D. Parsons, Time Warner's chairman, who stepped down in January as chief executive. Like many of his media mogul friendships, his relationship with Mr. Parsons started years ago in Sun Valley. ''I first met Vivi at the duck pond in Sun Valley,'' Mr. Parsons recalled in a phone interview. ''In typical Vivi Nevo fashion, we shortly became best buds.''

The personal connections are part of how Mr. Nevo makes investment decisions. ''He informs his instincts by being in the space,'' Mr. Parsons said. ''This is how he absorbs what's going on, and decides where to place his bets.''

For a man who has become a ubiquitous figure in a very public industry, Mr. Nevo is, and has remained, largely a private, unknown quantity. ''He's not so much mysterious, as he just doesn't want to be public,'' said Mr. Parsons, who is an executor of a trust Mr. Nevo established for his daughter, Lilly, age 6, from a previous relationship. ''The mysterious part is, you can't Google this guy and get his whole story.''

Mr. Nevo has always refused requests for interviews, and he declined to comment for this article. In private conversations with some friends and associates, however, Mr. Nevo has provided glimpses into his background.

The silhouette of Mr. Nevo's story goes like this: he was an only child who was born in Bucharest, Romania, and moved with his parents to Tel Aviv when he was a baby. His father was a chemical engineer and his mother was an anesthesiologist. As a boy, Mr. Nevo would vacation with his parents in Los Angeles, where he became enchanted with the glamour of Hollywood.

There was family money -- his father ran a chemical company, according to several people, including Mr. Nevo's friend and tennis partner Frank Biondi, the former head of Universal Studios and chief executive of Viacom. But the driving force of his life is the memory of his mother, who died of cancer in the late 1980s, leaving him an inheritance that allowed him to start investing.

''It's all about the respect he had for his mother,'' said Elizabeth Saltzman, international social editor of Vanity Fair, who met Mr. Nevo on the New York social scene in the 1980s (the second time she met him she shared a helicopter with him to the Hamptons). ''His mother was everything. I think there's a huge mama complex, of trying to make her proud.''

With the inheritance -- which one business associate of Mr. Nevo's, who spoke anonymously because his conversations with him were meant to be confidential, pegged at around $10 million -- Mr. Nevo set about investing and networking. He opened trading accounts at Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, as well as Allen & Company, which eventually won him an invitation to Sun Valley, the place that became the locus for so many of his relationships, including those with Mr. Parsons and Lachlan Murdoch. Through diligence and hard work, the right contacts and a lot of the right trades during the dot-com bubble of the late 1990s, he turned his inheritance into a sizable fortune.

Mr. Mack said: ''He took the money his family left him and he really created this media, trading empire. At Credit Suisse we did a lot of trading business with him, either outright or with derivatives.''

How much money he made is really anyone's guess. When Mr. Nevo began appearing a few years ago on certain lists, like Vanity Fair's New Establishment list, Forbes tried to gauge Mr. Nevo's wealth to see if he belonged on the magazine's list of billionaires, but ultimately gave up trying. Mr. Nevo owns homes in Malibu, Calif.; the Los Angeles-area neighborhood of Brentwood; the TriBeCa neighborhood of New York; London; and two homes in Tel Aviv, including his modest childhood home outside the city, which sits empty. In addition, he and Ms. Zhang recently bought a home in Beijing.

''Vivi is a very hard worker, and we'd begin chatting about the markets in the early morning, and then we'd talk late in the afternoon,'' said Bob Packer, who ran Goldman Sachs's institutional equities unit in San Francisco and handled many of Mr. Nevo's trades. ''He loved working with the markets. He's just a really affable, wonderful, loyal guy.''

In the case of Time Warner, his relationship with the company and its executives began in the early to mid-1990s, when he established a relationship with Gerald M. Levin, then chief executive.

''It was in a social context,'' Mr. Levin said, trying to recall how he met Mr. Nevo. ''I would go to every major fight that HBO had in Las Vegas. It was either at the fights in Las Vegas or at some movie premiere. No, I think it was in Vegas.''

''I spoke to him about Time Warner and what we were doing. Increasingly, he got interested. Unlike some other financial players, he has an interest not just in the financial aspect itself but also the personalities. The social nexus is part of his understanding and analysis.''

Joseph Ravitch, a prominent media investment banker at Goldman Sachs, said Mr. Nevo was ''extraordinarily Zelig-like in the sense that he endears himself to a totally diverse group of people from C.E.O.'s to artists and rock stars.''

''But it's not really Zelig,'' he continued, ''because he is always the same, open and straightforward Vivi.''

Several years ago, Joseph R. Perella, who led investment banking for Morgan Stanley and was the senior banker on the Time Warner account, received a phone call from Mr. Parsons. ''Parsons said, I know a guy you'd like to meet,'' Mr. Perella recalled. ''Interesting guy. Knows a lot about the business.''

Mr. Perella said they hit it off almost immediately over lunch at San Pietro, a Manhattan restaurant favored by investment bankers. ''He's one of the least boring types I have ever met,'' Mr. Perella said. ''My sense is he's a self-made guy who made it himself. He's just a smart investor. As for the building blocks of his fortune, I have no idea.''

Of late, Mr. Nevo has been sprinkling money around in private companies, many of which are new media ventures. He has around 25 private investments, according to a business associate, including stakes in Demand Media, a social networking company; CityVoter, a social site that allows city dwellers to post about things like where to eat and where to shop; an online music site, Buzznet; Spot Runner, an online advertising company; and the Internet video company Joost. He also has an investment in the Weinstein Company, the film company run by the brothers Bob and Harvey Weinstein, and had a small investment in Bette, a now-shuttered New York restaurant that was owned by Amy Sacco, a prominent nightlife entrepreneur.

Many of the investments are modest in size -- about $1 million in the Weinsteins; six figures in Demand Media -- but Mr. Nevo's association with a company brings value beyond the size of the check he writes. ''He's sort of like a media Wizard of Oz,'' said Tyler Goldman, the founder of Buzznet, who approached Mr. Nevo last year about investing. ''He had some strategic advice, but mostly relationship advice. We were working on a number of deals with bigger media companies, and he had advice on how to approach those.''

Nick Grouf, the chief executive of Spot Runner, said that Mr. Nevo was instrumental in brokering relationships, including with Lachlan Murdoch, who also invested. ''Vivi has been very helpful to us in making introductions to his friends,'' Mr. Grouf said. ''Lachlan is a great example. And with Time Warner, I met Dick Parsons through Vivi.''

In fact, Mr. Nevo's value -- beyond friendship -- to many executives is his wealth of information and contacts. ''Vivi is plugged in to everything,'' Mr. Parsons said. ''He hears everything.''

For others, Mr. Nevo is a great friend with a comfy house in Malibu in which to crash, as Lenny Kravitz did during the West Coast part of his 2004 world tour. ''It was nice to just have a place to put your stuff,'' Mr. Kravitz said in an interview. ''If I had to say anything about Vivi Nevo, it's that he's all heart. He operates on trust, heart and feeling.''

And about Mr. Nevo's business? ''I don't go there with him,'' Mr. Kravitz said. ''And that's part of our understanding. I'm interested in Vivi Nevo the person.''