The making of a businessman: How Al Gore got rich

In this Jan. 13, 2012, file photo, former Vice President and Current TV co-founder Al Gore participates in a Television Critics Association event in Pasadena, Calif. / File, AP Photo/Danny Moloshok

(MoneyWatch) With the $500 million sale of cable channel Current TV to Al Jazeera, co-founder and former Vice President Al Gore will personally net an estimated $70 million to $100 million. But Current's sale to a Qatari media company is only the latest step in a series of moves that lifted him from more moderate means to vast wealth.

Gore's remarkable financial success since leaving political life after the 2000 presidential election hardly amounts to a Horatio Alger story. He had a privileged youth as the son of a U.S. senator. Graduating from Harvard University, he served in the military, attended law school (without graduating), served in Congress for 16 years, and then became Vice President under President Bill Clinton.

• Al Gore says Al Jazeera has acquired Current TV
• Al Jazeera pays steep price for struggling Current TV

Yet until recently Gore, while certainly well off, was not enormously wealthy. When he ran for president 13 years ago, Gore's financial disclosure forms show that his most valuable assets were an Arlington, Va., home, whose value was listed between $250,000 and $500,000, and stock holdings worth between $500,000 and $1 million. He also derived income from mineral leases. His total assets on leaving office were between $780,000 and $1.9 million -- hardly chicken feed, but nowhere near enough to be a financial mover and shaker.

While the 2000 electoral loss marked the end of Gore's political career, it proved to be the start of a remarkably lucrative rise as a businessman. Most visibly associated with environmental issues that culminated with sharing the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, Gore was also busy building his future in the private sector. In 2001, he became vice chairman of financial services holding company Metropolitan West Financial. He co-founded Generation Investment Management, a U.K.-based investment management firm, in 2004. As of last fall, it had $3.6 billion in funds.

More important, in 2003 Gore joined the board of directors at Apple (AAPL). The position came with $50,000 a year in fees and an accumulated tens of millions in Apple stock. Since 2001 Gore has also been a senior advisor to Google (GOOG), where he received significant pre-public stock options.

And then there was the co-founding of Current Media in 2002. Six years later, when the company registered to go public (never completing the planned IPO), it listed Gore's annual compensation for 2007 at $1.05 million. That was the same year that Gore became a partner at storied Silicon Valley venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. Gore's growing celebrity, especially since the 2006 release of the film "An Inconvenient Truth" (the proceeds of which he reportedly donated to charity), has made for a lucrative sideline business on the lecture circuit. He collects as much as $175,000 per speech.

By 2008, Gore was already able to invest $35 million in hedge funds and private partnerships. After the sale of Current, Forbes "conservatively estimates" that Gore is worth at least $300 million, or more than Mitt Romney.

[adamdoesmovies]

Al Jazeera is one of the best news sources in the world, and is often the only place to get actual unbiased world news without the extremely tilted lens of American media. Among other media and journalistic professionals, they are highly respected for their reach and content.

I'm not sure how Glenn Beck, a talking head whose insane rants left him deemed too unstable even for FOX could possibly play into this discussion.

[juanricardo65]

Gore's rise as a "businessman" is not the typical path available to most people. For instance, how often does someone with relatively little business experience become vice chairman of a financial services holding company within one year of a major career change? It seems more plausible to me the firm sought out Gore because of some perceived benefit resulting from the association and not so much for his business acumen. I could be wrong.

Once "inside the ropes", I'm sure Gore had the wherewithal to achieve some level of success, but lets be honest, it wasn't in the firm's best interest if Gore somehow "didn't work out." Because failure was not an option, risk was more tolerable for Gore because he had a safety net. Most of us do not have that luxury. Again, I could be wrong.

Everything after the vice chairmanship I tend to discount because once you're "inside the ropes" opportunities become available that otherwise would not. I'm not suggesting wealth is guaranteed but the potential for wealth increases exponentially. I could be wrong, but I don't think so.

That said, I suppose I've missed the point of the article and the reference to Romney at the end completely alludes me.

[dcalbrecht]

It is quite easy to make money in this world, and lots of it, if you have no scruples or conscience! Look at the execs on Wall Street!

Selling to Al Jazeera, really, owned by Oil merchants, really? Giving THEIR hate speech a forum on the air waves in the US? Really? And you complain about Beck 3M? Really?

I guess if you can't make your real goal (Presidency) then it is OK to sell out. Let's face it, he is a big hypocrite.

[3march]

Val, you are angry and upset about something, which is why you are unable to express yourself clearly. From your incoherent reference to Beck, I suspect that you are addicted to "rage" which is the product that he dispenses on his program. You will never be able to deal with reality until you admit you have a problem. Good luck.

[Dave-in-Racine]

I agree with Val that you are in Fantasyland hanging by a chad on the notion that Gore won the presidential election.

[DonSteele1]

Our nation's media ownership today consists of too few having control over too much....... and then there's all of that flagrant conflict of interest!

[3march]

No one deserves success more that Al Gore. As a senator, while he, of course, did not invent the Internet, he supported its development at a time when only a handful of visionaries appreciated its potential impact. As an advocate for awareness of climate change, his book and subsequent film, An Inconvenient Truth, did more than any other single voice to alert the world to an impending disaster. Like Racael Carson, future generations will thank him, that is, if there are future generations.
As the winning but unacknowledged presidential candidate, those same future generations will speculate on how the planet might have benefitted from the absence from the world stage of W Bush and his two wars and the collapse of the world's economy and all the lost years and damaged lives it has taken to recover.

[valanis]

Wow what planet did you just get back from??????? Oh it must have been Fantasyland. Al Gore would rather sell to Al Jazeera then Glen Beck??? Could you imagine if it were vice versa, libs would be all over that. We all know the only green Gore knows are greenbacks. What a loser. Save your BS demo talking point the election is over. Hilary voted for the wars, are you going to bash her?? Oh yea free pass since she's a lib.

[sssjb]

Yeah is was all Bush's fault you dolt

[dman6015]

That's our boy! But did you have to sell to Al Jazeera?