Episode Details

What I learned from reading The Invisible Billionaire: Daniel Ludwig by Jerry Shields.

The cameraman was excited and more than a little nervous. In a matter of moments he would enjoy a unique opportunity: the chance to snap the first unposed picture ever taken of the richest man in the world. The strange thing was that most Americans had never even heard of Daniel Keith Ludwig.

How could a man in these days of mass media coverage and public obsession with world records, manage to accumulate a $3 billion fortune with hardly anyone becoming aware of it?

Obsessed with privacy, he reportedly pays a major public relations firm fat fees to keep his name out of the papers.

Daniel Ludwig is a man nobody knows yet his tanker fleet rivals those of the fabulous Greeks whose names are symbols of wealth. His empire began with shipping, grew big with shipbuilding, is branching out now into other fields.

With Ludwig, work is almost an obsession. Spartan in personal habits, business gets almost 100% of his attention. 

Once a project begins Ludwig doesn't rest easy until completion date. 

Ludwig’s most notable characteristic, besides his imagination and pertinacity, is a lifelong penchant for keeping his mouth shut.

He is interested in achievement, not fame.

I'm in this business because I like it. I have no hobbies.

D.K. was strictly a solo act. His zest for these operations is that of the lone wolf. He shares neither the rewards nor the risks with anyone.

Ludwig doesn't drink much, he doesn't smoke at all, he doesn't entertain lavishly. He counts cakories religiously. His only bad habit is work and that he can't stop.

Even as a boy Daniel exhibited a strong drive toward the acquisition of money.

During the mid-to-late-1920s Ludwig was more involved in buying and selling ships than he was in operating them.

The result was that hundreds of government-owned vessels, built at taxpayers' expense, were being sold off at well below cost both to legitimate shippers and to speculators who did the minimum required renovation work and then sold the ships for a quick profit.

He never liked spending money unless there was a good chance that it would make him more.

The advantage of bulk carriers was versatility; these ships were to be designed in such a way that they could haul either dry cargo (coal or metal ores) or liquids (petroleum or gasoline) without expensive, time-consuming structural conversion. If the oil market fell off, a bulk carrier could haul ore for a while. Or it could haul oil in one direction and coal or ore on the voyage home.

Ludwig needed a way to obtain ready money without either taking partners or assuming heavy mortgages. His early experiences with partnerships had been costly, and borrowing to finance ship renovation was no better. It was at this time that D.K. came up with the "two-name paper" arrangement he later said was the chief reason for his wealth. It all sounded so simple: go to an oil company; get it to sign a long-term charter to ship so much oil on a regular basis; take the charter to a bank and, using it as collateral, obtain a loan to build or renovate a ship to haul the oil to fulfill the charter. The plan was legal, logical, and ingenious.

He was able to start his climb toward being the world's biggest shipper mainly because he had finally managed to hook into the big time. He was now hauling oil for the Rockefeller empire.

One of the main reasons he had been buying old ships was to salvage and sell the parts removed during renovation. When he purchased a surplus ship he could recoup much of his investment by selling off the old engine and other machinery. Marine salvage was as familiar to D.K. as his own face in the mirror.

Some years later, the captain of a Ludwig ship made the extravagant mistake of mailing in a report of several page