With a personal fortune of £1.5billion, Nicolas Berggruen could splash out on some of the plushest properties around to make his home.
But the 50-year-old refuses to buy or rent a house, doesn’t own a car or even a watch and carries his few belongings around in a large paper bag.
Instead he lives in luxury hotels as he travels the globe snapping up companies to add to his impressive, and very lucrative, business empire.
Among his meagre possessions are a BlackBerry phone which he uses to keep up to date with the firms that have helped him become one of the world’s richest men.
He has just bought a £881million stake in Burger King via his UK company Justice Holdings
And this nomadic tycoon can often find himself in 14 different cities in a month, flitting between them on his Gulfstream IV private jet.
In 2000 Berggruen sold his Fifth Avenue home in New York and private island off Miami while vowing to give away most of his wealth.
So why did the eccentric Paris-born Franco-German who turned a £150,000 loan from his rich art dealer dad into a billion pound fortune swap a home life for one in a string of hotels?
He says: “I have always spent a lot of time in hotels, so it started to seem easier to do this. I feel happier.
“I am not that attached to material things. And the good thing is I can make choices. I have very few possessions. Luckily, as a man you don’t need much... a few papers, a couple of books, and a few shirts, jackets, sweaters.
“It fits in a little thing, in a paper bag, so it’s very easy.”
Single and childless, Berggruen buys handmade shirts monogrammed with his initials, but then wears them until they fall apart.
When he turns up at some of the finest hotels around, including the Carlyle in New York and London’s Claridges, he has no designer luggage. He spend tens of millions buying artworks by Andy Warhol and Damien Hirst – then immediately gives them away to museums.
Berggruen has become so wealthy that he made a startling admission last year. In an interview he confessed to be being “bored” of making billions through his business ventures.
He has been busy giving away a chunk of his fortune.
The startling life change began 12 years ago, though Berggruen has never said what the exact trigger was.
He claimed others bought luxury goods to make them feel “human” and adds: “I felt I was owned by possessions. Possessing things is not that interesting. Living in a grand environment to show myself and others that I have wealth has zero appeal.
Whatever I own is temporary, since we’re only here for a short period of time. It’s what we do and produce, it’s our actions that will last forever. That’s real value.”
Berggruen holds annual Oscars party at Los Angeles Chateau Marmont hotel, where he plays host to Hollywood celebrities such as Leonardo DiCaprio and Paris Hilton.
Berggruen’s story is certainly not one of rags to riches. Born in 1961, with one brother and two half-sisters, he enjoyed a privileged childhood.
His father Heinz was a Jew in Berlin who fled Nazi Germany and later befriended Pablo Picasso. Heinz became one of the world’s greatest collectors of the Spanish artist’s works.
Growing-up in Paris, young Berggruen showed a wild side, and this rebellious streak led to be being expelled for “insubordination” from a Swiss boarding school.
He returned to the French capital to complete his studies where he displayed socialist sympathies. Berggruen once declared: “I wouldn’t learn a word of English because that’s the language of imperialism.” Yet he overcame this objection by moving to London then New York to study finance at university.
Justifying the U-turn, he explains: “I said, ‘OK, let’s learn about the real world and capitalism’.”In 1988, he co-founded hedge fund Alpha Investment Management with the eldest son of a Colombian tycoon, which they later sold for an undisclosed fee.
He went on to create Berggruen Holdings, which had bought up stakes in companies around the world, including German department store Karstadt for one euro. There, he invested the equivalent of more than £40million and saved 25,000 jobs. Berggruen also ploughed £500million into Pearl, the insurance group.
His investment in Burger King is likely to thrust the tycoon into the limelight.
Explaining his interest in the fast food giant, Berggruen he says it “stood out as a unique global player” with a “strong heritage”.
Last year Berggruen’s Justice Holdings, chaired by former Labour City minister Lord Myners, was said to be considering a £1billion bid for breakfast cereal firm Weetabix, which also owns Alpen, Ready Brek and Weetos. Justice Holdings was involved in the Burger King deal.
Berggruen has never explained the secret behind his staggering ability to make money. Yet he insists: “My father helped me through school but everything else I did on my own.”
His declaration that “our actions will last forever”, could explain why he has poured more than £60million into setting up a think tank, the Berggruen Institute, which encourages fresh political debate.
Last year, he splashed out £12million on a specific campaign to save California from its crippling budget deficit.
Berggruen spends several months a year in the state, normally living at the Peninsula Hotel in Beverly Hills.
He also sits on the board at the Museum Berggruen in Berlin, as well as other venerable institutions including New York’s Museum of Modern Art.
Berggruen is among more than 50 billionaires who have signed a pledge to give away at least half their wealth.
Another is Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, who vowed to donate 50% of his £4.4billion internet fortune to charity.
The brainchild of Microsoft’s Bill Gates and investment guru Warren Buffett, the scheme aims to encourage a wave of philanthropy among the super-rich.
There has also been talk of Berggruen creating a media empire to take on broadcast and print mogul Rupert Murdoch, although nothing has come of this.
Politics is very much his passion nowadays, and bringing change.
Last year, he recruited a group called the Council for the Future of Europe that includes former PM Tony Blair, former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and Nobel laureates.
Money can certainly buy you influence. Yet this globe-trotting, homeless billionaire, who is single but often in the company of beautiful women, insists he is not trying to use his huge wealth to mould the world in his image.
Berggruen says: “Luckily the whole world is not like me. Or else, there would be no world at all.”
