Who

Rahr is the billionaire owner of the drug wholesaler Kinray. He's also known for the $45 million house he purchased in the Hamptons and his regular appearances in gossip columns.

Backstory

An NYU law school dropout, Rahr started wholesaling products to other drugstores out of his father's Brooklyn pharmacy in the late 1960s. He ultimately built the business into the privately-held behemoth Kinray, which now pulls in a whopping $4 billion a year in sales. The company offers 600 products—from drugs to bandages to first aid cream—sold under the Preferred Plus Pharmacy brand and distributed to more than 3,000 small pharmacies in seven Northeastern states. All those generic prescriptions and packages of gauze have added up nicely for Rahr. He's worth $2 billion, according to Forbes. But while it's been a great ride so far, it may not last. The increasing popularity of mail-order pharmacies poses a threat to Kinray's business and the SEC recently cracked down on the practice of stockpiling drugs before prices go up, a maneuver that wholesalers like Kinray have used in the past to generate millions in profits.

Drama

In the past couple of years Rahr's made several notable appearances in the tabloids. In 2005, Page Six reported that he was booted out of a party by Plum TV founder Cary Woods for horning into photo ops with Angelina Jolie and Meryl Streep. In 2006, he hit the gossip pages again after he dispatched underlings to pass out fliers at the office of Upper East Side dermatologist Steven Victor. He vowed that the fliers—which read, "Dr. Steven Victor, Dermatologist, May Make Your Skin Crawl"—would continue until the doc repaid the billionaire a $200,000 loan.

Pet causes

Rahr pledged $1 million to the Children's Hospital Trust of Boston, in honor of Katie Couric, whose husband died of cancer. He also handed over a $1 million to the Robin Hood Foundation.

Personal

Rahr and his wife, Carol, have two kids: Robert, who once worked for the family business and now works in private equity, and Felicia. The couple's taste for expensive real estate has earned them plenty of press over the past few years. In 2005, they paid $45 million in cash for a 25-acre, waterfront East Hampton estate called Burnt Point. (Perhaps not surprisingly, Rahr's basement "rec room" supposedly features hundreds of photos of him posing with celebrities.) A pal of Donald Trump, Rahr also owns a 30th floor apartment at Trump Park Avenue, for which he paid $13 million in 2004. Trump isn't the only real estate mogul Rahr is close to; an avid golfer, he hits the course regularly with his buddy Richard LeFrak.

No joke

Despite the fact that he regularly brags about driving a 10-year-old Jeep—a detail that's slipped into countless articles in publications like Forbes and Crains—there's no record of a Jeep registered in his name. He does, however, own a 2006 Aston Martin convertible, a 2006 Porsche Cayenne, and a 2005 Mercedes.