Ronald Perelman

Ronald Perelman built MacAndrews & Forbes into a sprawling holding company through a career of leveraged buyouts, taking stakes and controlling interests across industries as varied as cosmetics, licorice, banking, and comic-book publishing, most notably acquiring Revlon in the 1980s. He has since had to sell off major holdings, including much of his art collection and his stake in the military vehicle maker AM General, to manage the debt load his companies carried from those deals.