Philanthropist. Investor. Sports and entertainmentmagnate.Energy baron. Railroad enthusiast. Art collector. Political conservative. Media owner. Media recluse.
Individually, none of the descriptors does justice to Philip Anschutz. Collectively, they begin to describe the depth and magnitude of Colorado’s pre-eminent business executive.
Add a new entry to his résumé: . Anschutz will accept the award Monday at a banquet to benefit the National Western Scholarship Trust.
Anschutz, 75, declined to be interviewed for this article. That’s a departure from the Citizen of the West norm. Every living recipient in the award’s 37-year history has agreed to talk to the media.
But declining interviews is standard procedure for the intensely private Anschutz. He is probably the most-written-about and least-quoted industrial titan in the history of the West.
“There’s a perception that he’s aloof,” said his son, Christian Anschutz, a Denver real estate developer. “But he is as down to earth and personable as any person can be. I don’t think people know the real Phil Anschutz and how passionate he is about the state of Colorado.”
The love of Colorado began early. Although Anschutz grew up on a farm and ranch near Russell, Kan., he and his family became regular visitors to Colorado after his father opened a Denver office to manage oil and gas holdings.
Anschutz graduated from the University of Kansas in 1961 with a bachelor’s degree in business. Although he aspired to attend law school, his father was in poor health and the younger Anschutz moved to Denver to help run the energy business. In 1964, he created The Anschutz Corp. to launch his own oil and gas investments.
Still operating 50 years later, The Anschutz Corp. has bought and sold billions of dollars of holdings in in industries as diverse as real estate, telecommunications, newspapers, mining, manufacturing, ranching, movie theaters, film production, railroads, and sports teams and arenas.
Anschutz’s investment timing can be impeccable.
In 1982, Anschutz sold to Mobil a 50 percent stake in the prolific East Anschutz Ranch oil field in Utah for more than $500 million — just before oil and gas prices took a big dive.
Analysts scratched their heads in the 1980s when Anschutz bought the Denver & Rio Grande Western railroad and, four years later, the Southern Pacific. Both carriers were viewed as significant underperformers. Yet, according to analysts’ estimates and published reports, he cleared about $1.6 billion on an initial investment of $90 million.
Anschutz parlayed the railroads’ real-estate holdings into the pathways for a fiber-optic system that became Qwest Communications.
Ironically, at the same time that Anschutz is being feted as the National Western’s Citizen of the West,
The firm owns or has stakes in the Staples Center, L.A. Live entertainment complex, O2 Arena in London, Los Angeles Kings, Los Angeles Lakers and several pro soccer teams. Anschutz is working to build a football stadium in Los Angeles and to get an NFL team to return to the city.
An avid squash player, Anschutz is playing less now because of a bad back. He walks and runs 4 to 5 miles a day, but he no longer competes in marathons.
Anschutz is known to dislike being described in news articles as a billionaire. But the description is hard to ignore. He is perennially listed in the “Forbes 400” list as one of the richest Americans.
His 2014 ranking dropped to No. 40 from No. 38 the previous year, although
In 2011, from Oklahoma Publishing Co. in a package deal that also included the Manitou & Pike’s Peak Railway Co.; The Oklahoman newspaper in Oklahoma City; the 500-room Lost Pines Resort & Spa in Austin, Texas; manufacturing companies Pavestone LLC and De Wafelbakkers LLC; 1.5 million acre-feet of water rights under Greenland Ranch in Douglas County; and 100 pieces of Western art.
Anschutz has since invested more than $130 million in The Broadmoor, renovating and expanding the hotel, as well as adding satellite lodges around nearby Cheyenne Mountain.
In 2012,
Clarity recently said it was Newspaper analysts were skeptical, saying the announcement perhaps was a move to help Anschutz better position himself in a possible bid for The Denver Post.
Amid the business dealings, Anschutz has made philanthropy and art collecting cornerstones of his life. In 2010, he created the , one of the world’s largest privately owned assemblages of Western art.
The Anschutz family has been a significant supporter of the Denver Art Museum’s Petrie Institute of Western American Art.
Investment banker Tom Petrie knows Anschutz from both the Western art and business spectrums.
“He has assembled, in my view, the greatest collection of Western art in the second half of the last century and going into this century,” Petrie said. “On the business side, he’s very forthright. He has a well-earned reputation in the ability to see how things unfold, contrary to the prevailing consensus.”
Anschutz’s philanthropy is centered on the family-run Anschutz Foundation.
The foundation’s most recent filing with the Internal Revenue Service shows total assets of $1.1 billion and charitable disbursements in 2012 of $50 million. Past recipients include hospitals, schools, human services agencies and politically conservative nonprofits.
When the foundation made a series of gifts totaling more than $91 million to the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center,
“That campus is his pride and joy,” said CU president Bruce Benson. “He does so much that nobody knows about because he just wants this to be a better community. He has all the right philosophies and values.”
Steve Raabe: 303-954-1948, sraabe@denverpost.com or twitter.com/steveraabedp
