Donald John Trump is one of America’s most successful industrialist, author, television celebrity and socialite. His interests are mainly concentrated in the real estate and entertainment business. The Trump Organization is a real estate developer based in the United States is chaired by Donald Trump, who also happens to be the CEO of the organization.
The Trump Entertainment Resorts, founded by Donald Trump, has operations in several casinos and hotels spread across the world. The lifestyle lived by Donald Trump is lavish and is filled with all kinds of luxuries, this made him one of the highly sought after celebrities for the paparazzi. His celebrity status increased furthermore with the launch of the reality show on NBC, called ‘The Apprentice’. Donald Trump is the host and the executive producer of the show.
Donald Trump’s father, Fred Trump, had established the Trump Organization which inspired Donald to pursue his goals in the same career. Though, during school days, Donald considered attending film school but decided against it as he believed real estate was a better idea. Being the fourth of five children, Donald completed his graduation in Bachelor of Science in Economics from the Wharton School in 1968 and immediately joined the Trump Organization.
As soon as Donald Trump joined his father’s firm, he was greeted with a lot of early success. He mainly concentrated on middle class housing in Queens, Staten Island and Brooklyn. During his college life, he worked on a project which involved the renovation of an apartment complex in Cincinnati, Ohio. He managed to convert the occupancy rate of the complex from 66% to 100%. This resulted in a profit of $6 million for the Trump Organization when they sold the complex at the price of $12 million.
In 1989, began the downfall of the Trump Empire due to the effect of the recession which caused several delays in loan payments. Donald Trump managed to stay in business with more loans and postponed payments while also financing his third casino, the Taj Mahal, worth nearly a billion dollars. In 1991, the debt finally brought the empire to bankruptcy while nearly bringing him to personal bankruptcy as well. Several deals were struck and compromises made in order to keep the organization afloat. He combined his holdings in the casino business to create the Trump Hotels and Casino Resorts. The company managed to make profit only for a couple of years before it failed to pay even the interest over its $3 Billion debt.
The decade between 1997 and 2007 brought some kind of respite for Trump with the construction of the Trump International Hotel and Towers in Honolulu, Chicago, Toronto, Tampa and Fort Lauderdale. Of the above establishments, the Chicago tower managed to be the least successful as nearly 30% of the units remained unsold. This led to a $40 million dollar debt to Deutsche in 2008. In 2009, Donald Trump faced another business bankruptcy, this time it was for Trump Entertainment Resorts.
Donald Trump’s celebrity life has been rather successful earning him a place on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for his contribution to television with his show, “The Apprentice”
This article was written by Caroline.
Tags: businessman, donald trump, industrialist, trump prganization