Cityfile: New York's Most Notable and Influential

Ira Rennert Will Not Be Outdone | This hasn't been a very good year for Ira Rennert, the shadowy tycoon who built a fortune by scooping up steel, magnesium, coal, and lead companies around the world. Rennert reportedly lost $100-$200 million by investing his money with Bernie Madoff (although considering the new installment of the Forbes 400 lists his net worth at $4 billion, it's not like he's going to have to start panhandling anytime soon). Today, however, there's a bit of good news for Rennert: According to Zillow.com, Rennert's ridiculously massive house in the Hamptons once again takes top honors for being the largest home in the U.S. Don't believe it? A few photos of Rennert's 66,395-square-foot, 29-bed, 39-bath Italianate mansion are below.More

Meet NYC's New 'Most Eligible Bachelor' | There's a new billionaire in town. And he happens to be single, too! This week, Russia's richest man, Mikhail Prokhorov, cut a deal with real estate developer Bruce Ratner to buy the Nets as well as part of the new Nets arena under construction in Brooklyn. Today the Times compares Prokhorov to one other non-married billionaire in New York, Mayor Michael Bloomberg. So how different are the two men? Let's take a look, shall we: More

Blackstone's Stephen Schwarzman Tops Best-Paid Chiefs [Bloomberg]
Steve Schwarzman [Twitter]

Steve Bing Knows No Bounds | It was super-sketchy Hollywood producer Steve Bing who provided the jet that Bill Clinton used so he could go on his rescue mission to North Korea. If only Bing's Boeing could talk. Not only has the plane reportedly served as the setting for various escapades over the years involving lots of babes and other nefarious creatures like Ron Burkle, it may have also been the mode of transportation for a "secret research trip" to Cuba last week, according to the Hollywood Reporter. Sadly, the paper couldn't pin down Bing's involvement in the voyage to a second rogue nation in less than two weeks: "A receptionist at his Shangri-La Entertainment production company Wednesday denied ever hearing of Bing." Well played, young lady, well played. [THR, ABC News]

Billionaire financier Carl Icahn started blogging to great fanfare in February 2008. But while he got off to a very solid start, posting regularly about "shareholder empowerment" and corporate governance, the last few months have been a big disappointment for loyal readers of The Icahn Report. Icahn—who, as far as we can tell, holds the title of America's wealthiest blogger—hasn't put up anything new since April 16, and it wasn't even an original post, since it had been copied and pasted from the Huffington Post. What's with deal? Has Icahn given up? More

When we noted Stewart Rahr's fondness for yellow sunglasses a couple of weeks ago, we had no idea that the pharmaceutical mogul (and 227th richest man in America) was planning to spread the trend. But he clearly is, since he managed to get Bill Clinton to wear a pair the other day. After the jump, a photo of one of Rahr's other recent conquests. Michael Phelps and Donald Trump: You're up next. More

Exciting news about pharmaceutical billionaire Stewart Rahr landed in our inbox today: "Stewart Rahr produced his first feature film, Shannon's Rainbow starring an award winning cast including Julianne Michelle, Daryl Hannah, Louis Gossett Jr., Eric Roberts, Claire Forlani, Krista Allen, Charles Durning, Steve Guttenberg, Stephen Colletti, Scott Eastwood, Jason Gedrick, and Melissa Spielberg Katz. Rahr is King of Hollywood now!" Does that make Lisa Maria Falcone the queen? Possibly! All you info you need about Rahr's exciting new film—"the story of a 17-year-girl who faces and overcomes hardship with the love of a horse and the mother she never knew she had"—available here.

Poor Herb Allen. You spend your entire career serving as trusted advisor and investment banker to old media titans like Rupert Murdoch, Barry Diller, Dick Parsons, Bob Iger, Jeff Zucker, Gerry Laybourne, Paul Allen, and Oprah, and then a party-promoting new media group mixes you up with the guy who founded CourtTV? Oh, kids! [Gawker, NYO, The Deal, Flickr]

Is Donald Trump really a billionaire or is it all smoke and mirrors? Details about Trump's true net worth are emerging in a New Jersey courtroom as Trump goes head to head with Tim O'Brien, the author of 2005's TrumpNation: The Art of Being the Donald. In his book, O'Brien had the nerve to suggest the real estate mogul was only worth between $150 and $250 million; Trump, enraged by the estimate, fired back with a $5 billion defamation lawsuit. At the time, Trump explained that the size of the suit was based on what he was actually worth, although as depositions in the case now show, Trump wasn't exactly sitting in front of an Excel spreadsheet as he tallied up his assets. (At one point, he said that he relied on "mental calculations" to come up with his figure.) More

Oh, how the mighty have fallen. Time magazine celebrated the release of its "100 most influential" list last night, a gathering that attracted plenty of rich finance-y types a year ago, back when saying you worked at a hedge fund or investment bank didn't have the reputational value of saying you spent your day repossessing cars or running a funeral home. The financial meltdown translated into a slightly different guest list and seating plan this time around, not surprisingly. Hedge fund billionaire Steve Cohen, who graciously stood on the red carpet last year and even permitted a photographer to take his picture (not that he smiled or anything), wasn't even invited. And while billionaire financier Steve Schwarzman did make the invite list—and turned out for the ceremony—he probably should have just stayed at home.

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We have some new—and disturbing—information on the house of horrors in Bedford occupied by billionaire Nelson Peltz and his wife Claudia. (If you missed yesterday's installment, go here.) We've made contact with several other people who worked inside the home in the past, and their stories, which are just as outrageous as the ones we'd heard previously, make it clear that the Peltzes may very well be the scariest couple to work for in the tri-state area.More

Trump's Empire Continues to Dwindle | Poor Donald. The posh tennis club above Grand Central Terminal that the Trumpster has been leasing for a song for three decades now—he pays just $4 a square foot and the rent has never been raised—isn't going to be around for much longer. Metro-North says it plans to tear the courts down to make way for a "rest area" for 1,100 conductors and train engineers. Blue-collar workers taking over a fancy tennis club owned by Donald Trump? We smell revolution! [NYDN via Curbed]

Clinton and Burkle Call It Quits | Remember that friend you had in college who was a total troublemaker and really crazy stuff would invariably go down whenever you hung out with him? And then the day came when you suddenly decided it was time to grow up and, like, be an adult and everything, and you decided to stop hanging out with him? That day may have arrived for Bill Clinton and sleazy billionaire Ron Burkle: The Journal reports that the former president has decided to sever his ties as an "adviser" to Burkle's Yucaipa Cos. [WSJ]

Forbes Releases Another List of Rich People | Forbes's somewhat suspicious list of the world's billionaires is now online. You can look through the complete list here, but as you can probably imagine, it wasn't a very good year for members of the ten-figure club. The 2009 list includes 793 people—it's down 30 percent from last year—and a handful of notable New Yorkers (like Sandy Weill and Hank Greenberg) saw their names vanish. NYC's richest man, according to the mag? That would be Michael Bloomberg, who saw his net worth jump 39 percent from $11.5 billion to $16 billion. So did the mayor have such a fantastic year? No, Forbes had just been underestimating his stake in Bloomberg LP in years past, although they didn't bother to mention that. [Forbes, NYP]

More Trouble for The Donald | Donald Trump can't seem to go a day without running into a financial crisis of some sort. His Chicago condo project has been in trouble for months now; a few weeks ago, his Atlantic City casino empire filed for bankruptcy; and just last week a Trump-branded apartment building in Mexico went bust, leaving buyers who put down deposits out in the cold. Today's news: The Trump International Hotel & Tower in Las Vegas is in trouble, according to the Journal, which says that three-fourths of the buyers in the condo-hotel have failed to close contracts. And there's bad news closer to home today, too: He's now in arrears for failing to pay rent on the site of his planned "catering hall-restaurant" at Jones Beach. Guess we'll have to just hope that Ivanka's jewelry line is doing a bit better so she can support her dad in his old age. [WSJ, Newsday]