Thursday, October 30, 2008

Age Discrimination: Not in Enterprise Business

The presidential campaign exhibited age discrimination this year in a despicable fashion but business as typified by a Silicon Valley lifestyle is usually viewed as the Mecca of wunderkinds. Au contraire, since the age discrimination issue may be less of an issue than many realize.


One such youngster is Leslie Wexner, 70, of The Limited; in retail there is CEO James Sinegal, 72, of Costco; 72-year-old billionaire investor Carl Icahn, who played rough with both Yahoo and Microsoft in the summer of 2008; 75-year-old Sheldon Adelson heads up The Venetian hotel in Las Vegas; 77-year-old Rupert Murdoch chairs News Corporation; Milton Cooper, 79, is at the helm of real estate developer Kimco Realty; pharmaceutical maker Forest Laboratories is led by Howard Solomon, 80; 80-year-old Si Newhouse of Condé Nast; and last but not least is Sumner Redstone, 85, who chairs National Amusements, which owns CBS, Viacom, MTV, BET, Paramount Pictures and Dreamworks.