John C. Malone is a billionaire American business executive, landowner and
philanthropist. He served as chief executive officer of Tele-Communications
Inc., a cable and media giant, for twenty-four years from 1973 to 1996.
Malone is now chairman of Liberty Media, Liberty Global, and Liberty Interactive.
He was interim CEO of Liberty Media, until succeeded by former Oracle CFO
Greg Maffei. Early life and education
John C. Malone was born on March 7, 1941 in Milford, Connecticut. His father was
Daniel L. Malone, an engineer. John Malone is of Irish Heritage.
In 1959, Malone graduated from Hopkins School in New Haven, Connecticut. In
1963, he graduated at Yale University with a BA in electrical engineering and
economics, where he was a Phi Beta Kappa and National Merit scholar. In 1964,
Malone graduated at Johns Hopkins University with a MS in industrial
management. He also received a MS in electrical engineering at an NYU program
at Bell Labs in 1965 before receiving his PhD in operations research at Johns
Hopkins in 1967. Business career
In 1963, Malone began his business career at Bell Telephone Laboratories of
AT&T, working in economic planning and research and development. In 1968, he
joined McKinsey & Company, and in 1970, became Group Vice President at General
Instrument Corporation. He was later named President of Jerrold Electronics,
a GI subsidiary. For twenty-four years, from 1973 to 1996, Malone served as
President and CEO of Tele-Communications Inc..
Malone serves on the Boards of Directors for the Bank of New York Mellon, the
Cato Institute, and Expedia.com. Additionally, Malone is Chairman
Emeritus of the Board for Cable Television Laboratories, Inc. and
Chairman of Liberty Global, Inc., and the DirecTV Group. His rise to Chairman
at Liberty Global, Inc., was contentious at times. In 2005, John Malone held 32
percent of the shares in the media concern News Corporation, and although
only about half of these shares were voting shares, Rupert Murdoch reportedly
had concerns that he might lose the control of his company to Malone, and
tried to oust him from the firm with a "poison pill" strategy. He served as
Director of the National Cable & Telecommunications Association from 1974
to 1977 and again from 1980 to 1993. During the 1977–1978 term, Malone was
the NCTA's Treasurer. Land ownership
He owns Silver Spur Ranches, a ranching and beef company which includes the
Silver Spur Ranch in Encampment, Wyoming, Bell Ranch and the TO Ranch in
New Mexico as well as ranches in Walden, Colorado and Kiowa, Colorado. As of 1
February 2011, he has surpassed Ted Turner as the largest individual private
landowner in the US, owning 2,100,000 acres of land, most of which is in
Maine. His international real estate holdings include Humewood Castle in
Ireland. Philanthropy
In 2000, Malone gave $24 million for the construction of Yale's Daniel L. Malone
Engineering Center, named in honor of his father. In 2011, Malone gave the
Johns Hopkins Whiting School of Engineering's largest gift ever of $30
million for a new building on Homewood Campus. The building will be named
Malone Hall. In the same year, he gave the Yale School of Engineering & Applied
Science's largest gift ever of $50 million. Malone has also given $60
million to Hopkins School to fund the construction of two new buildings,
Malone Science Center, named for his father, as well as Heath Commons, named
after his favorite Hopkins teacher. In 2014, Malone and his wife donated
$42.5 million to Colorado State University to help create their
Institute for Biologic Translational Therapies, which aims to develop stem
cell and other treatments for animals and people. Of the donation, $32.5
million will pay for half the construction costs and $10 million will
go to operational expenses. = Malone Scholars Program=
In 1997, he established the Malone Family Foundation, which operates the
Malone Scholars Program that provides scholarship endowments to select private
schools throughout the United States after a rigorous research process of top
schools, including Hopkins School, Waynflete School, and thirty-six others
as of 2011. Personal life
Malone reportedly shuns the limelight and glamorous lifestyle and takes his
family vacations alongside long time friend Gary Biskup, in a recreational
vehicle. However, in business dealings he has been dubbed "Darth Vader", a
nickname allegedly given to him by Al Gore when Malone was the head of TCI,
where he demanded equity positions in cable programming services in return for
carriage, and attempted to defeat the must-carry rules which protected
broadcasters, a battle which the cable industry eventually lost in 1997 in the
U.S. Supreme Court. In 1994, Wired portrayed Malone on their cover as "Mad
Max" from The Road Warrior, with an interview describing his battles with
the FCC. References
Further reading L. J. Davis. Billionaire Shell Game: How
Cable Baron John Malone and Assorted Corporate Titans Invented a Future
Nobody Wanted. Doubleday. ISBN 978-0-385-47927-1.
Mark Robichaux. Cable Cowboy: John Malone and the Rise of the Modern Cable
Business. Wiley. ISBN 978-0-471-70637-3. External links
Appearances on C-SPAN