Ron Perelman’s name comes up time and time again when it comes to big music acquisitions. This time he’s chasing Universal’s Parlophone along with Simon Fuller, Sony/BMG and Warner Music Group.
But why the constant interest in owning a label? Perelman is a genuine music-lover, joining Cablevision boss James Dolan in the mogul/musician category.
Some may know that Perelman has been a drummer for years and has performed with Rod Stewart at Madison Square Garden and done a song or two with Bruce Springsteen and Sting at the Carnegie Hall benefit for the rainforest.
He also plays the encores at all Apollo benefit concerts at his home in East Hampton.
Perelman — who hosted 60 people at his New Year’s birthday bash in St. Barts — will always have the tom-toms to fall back on should things at Revlon owner MacAndrews and Forbes (Perelman’s company) not work out.
Perelman’s representatives declined comment.–Claire Atkinson
Gaucho marks
It appears hedgie Paul Singer has strange bedfellows in his battle with Argentina President Cristina Kirchner.
The hacking group Anonymous took over control of Argentina’s Bureau of Statistics, according to local published reports. The hacking group announced its intentions on Twitter Thursday.
The prompting of the takeover is the Kirchner government’s under-reporting on the rate of inflation in the South American country.
The International Monetary Fund, in a meeting last month, discussed whether the country should be penalized for refusing to reform a system that has led to fines and jail time for statisticians who insist official government numbers are too low.
An IMF decision on that is expected in the next two weeks.
Last week, the government announced Argentina’s inflation for 2012 was 18.4 percent, while outside analysts put it at a little over 25 percent.
No word on whether Anonymous has been looking at the Bureau of Labor Statistics website.–Post staff
Gore value
Al Gor
e got plenty more than an iPhone this holiday season.
The former vice president made a small fortune from Apple stock.
Gore, an Apple director, exercised options to purchase 59,000 shares of Apple stock recently for the bargain-basement price of $7.475 a share, according to an Securities and Exchange Commission filing.
Based on Apple’s current share price of $500, Gore purchased $29.5 million worth of Apple stock for only $441,000.
No one ever said Gore couldn’t fund-raise.–Post staff
Just ‘browsing’
Joey Healy is carving out a niche in the beauty market in New York, where competition is intense for brows. That’s right, as in eyebrows.
Healy started a beauty brand that specializes in eyes and eyebrows in 2011, after graduating from Villanova University and working at beauty counters at Bergdorf Goodman, Barneys and Bloomingdales.
And now he has launched the first “eyebrow bar” in the city: the Joey Healy Brow Studio on Fifth Avenue, which specializes in everything brows — tinting, makeup and shaping.
Basic stuff starts at $85, makeup at $250 and makeup lessons for $350 a pop. Before the studio, he had a mobile “eyebrow styling division” (in late 2009).
He’s selling his namesake products at the salon and worldwide. Healy invested $10,000 in product to get going, and $15,000 for the studio.
His competition in New York is intense — waxing and “threading” can be found all over the city for as little as $10.
Healy services start at $85 for eyebrow shaping and $75 for eyebrow tinting.
He says the difference — and the reason celebrities like Kyra Sedgwick come to him for perfect brows — is low volume and high quality.–Julie Earle-Levine
Ditched dinero
Check your clothes drawers when planning vacations this year.
Americans seem to have a wasteful habit of tossing leftover foreign currency around the home — for a whopping total of $1.7 billion each year.
The extent of leftover travel treasures was disclosed in a study by the foreign exchange trading website forexcurrency.us.
It said that Americans, more than any other nationality, virtually throw away unspent foreign coins and currency.
“We were shocked to discover that close to $1.7 billion was being wasted by travelers every year due to lack of interest in exchanging foreign currency back into dollars,” said chief analyst David Errington at forexcurrency.us.–Paul Tharp