FINDING the right birthday gift for a billionaire isn’t easy. But Ken Langone got a priceless, one-of-a-kind surprise for his 74th — leading the world’s biggest Columbus Day parade.
When he got the call, the Wall Street tycoon was nearly speechless, friends say — rare for the outspoken financier who’s already led a parade of some of America’s biggest business deals over the past four decades.
Langone’s career has generated hundreds of billions of dollars in Wall Street deals, and he’s quietly given away more than $350 million of his own wealth. Blunt about almost any subject, Langone balks when it comes to tooting his own horn.
His passion is his friendships, and he says he makes investments in a man’s character, not his business plans.
“It’s a bet on people,” Langone says. “I want character and if someone doesn’t have it, I won’t get involved, even if they’re offering a cure for cancer.”
It’s a philosophy upon which he built his $1 billion fortune. “
Early on after I meet someone, I love to have breakfast or lunch with them so I can observe how they treat the person waiting on them,” Langone tells The Post. “If you can be good and decent to the people who can’t fight back, essentially you’re a decent and good person. “
My dad had a wonderful expression: ‘If you’re going to do something, ask yourself the question, would you mind if it was on the front page of the newspaper tomorrow?’ That’s the acid test.”
Fiercely loyal to his friends, he famously goes to bat for them without hesitation.
When his friend, former NYSE chief Dick Grasso, got hit with questionable state charges of taking bloated paychecks, Langone launched four years of interviews defending Grasso. The charges, made by then-New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, got tossed.
Gracious and charming, Langone’s combative side rarely surfaces, friends say.
“That’s the side you don’t want to tangle with,” said his pal Lawrence Auriana, chairman of the Columbus Citizens Foundation, which runs the annual parade. “Ken is the real thing. He’s what Italian-Americans are all about.”
The son of a plumber and a school cafeteria worker in Roslyn, LI, Langone’s grandparents immigrated from Avellino, near Naples. His parents mortgaged their home so Langone could earn an economics degree at Bucknell.
After an Army tour at the peak of the Cold War, Langone took his first financial job at Equitable Life Assurance, and attended night school at New York University for an MBA.
He hit Wall Street in 1960 like a whirlwind, moving quickly up the ladder at broker-dealer R.W. Pressprich. By 1968, the young achiever stunned rivals by engineering a deal that allowed Ross Perot to reap a windfall selling stock in his Electronic Data Systems.
Langone, behind the scenes, built Home Depot into a $48 billion retail giant, and bankrolled numerous medical and scientific firms. NYU’s famed medical center also carries the Langone name.
“My parents instilled in me that you don’t accomplish anything just by yourself, no matter high you go or how well you do. It’s easy to say, ‘I did it myself,’ but in reality no man is an island. My parents were humble people of modest means. But they had a great sense of giving and sharing — they taught me this is the way to live your life.”
In his high-powered world, Langone has remained devoted to his wife of 53 years, Elaine, and their three sons. He likes to cook, and boasts that his meatball recipe beats any around. He likes to tell of a cook-off at his Sands Point, LI, home with Grasso.
“Grasso’s meatballs looked like hockey pucks. I have a dog that will eat your shoes if you let him — and he wouldn’t touch them.”