Top 30 richest Americans
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Forbes.com, September 22, 2011
Paul Allen
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Microsoft co-founder spent 2011 promoting his tell-all memoir, Idea Man, dishing on the ups and down of his friendship with Bill Gates and his myriad and spotty investing career over the past 20 years. He dictated much of the book while undergoing chemotherapy to rid himself of a recurrence of lymphoma. Once again healthy, Allen is refocusing his bets on real estate and financial services, reaping big gains from his 60-acre holding in the South Lake Union district in Seattle (home to Amazon's new HQ) and doing small business lending through pseudo-bank Ascentium Capital and Enhanced Capital Partners, which makes tax-advantaged loans in low-income communities. The mega-philanthropist (Allen has given away $1.2 billion to date) is closing in on a complete genetic atlas of the human brain at his Allen Institute For Brain Science. Allen's also paring back on the toys, having sold his 747 to Donald Trump and putting his 292-acre island in Washington state on the market for $13.5 million.
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