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Betting on the coming storm: Sovereign Deed's bankroller sees disaster ahead
by: Ed Brayton
Sunday (12/09) at 23:01 PM
Texas billionaire Richard Rainwater made his fortune by figuring out ways to profit from the misfortune of others. When the oil bust hit Houston in the mid '90s and property values bottomed out, he swooped in to buy up millions of square feet of office space at pennies on the dollar, investments that made him his first billion dollars when the values inevitably rebounded. As the money man behind private military contractor Sovereign Deed, which is now in the process of building a base of operations in Pellston, Mich., it looks like Rainwater is preparing to profit again by moving from Fortune to Soldier of Fortune.
Rainwater, whose net worth of $3.5 billion makes him one of the 100 richest Americans, began his financial ascent when he was put in charge of the family investments for Sid Bass, his classmate at Stanford. Rainwater turned their already sizable nest egg into a fortune worth more than $5 billion before striking out on his own in the mid-1980s.Sovereign Deed is the latest of many companies he has co-founded or founded , including oil-drilling company ENSCO International, Columbia Hospital Corporation and Crescent Real Estate.
Why the move into the private military contractor (PMC) field? The answer may be in a 2005 profile of Rainwater in Fortune magazine, where he spoke in blunt terms about what he sees as an imminent economic and societal collapse.
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