At 72 years of age, Gene Yamagata is no wide-eyed greenie when it comes to personal finance and entrepreneurship.
While the fall of Wall Street continues to decimate people’s savings and threaten businesses, the Las Vegas-based, Japanese-American multimillionaire has been touring Asia finding diamonds-in-the-rough-microentrepreneurs he can give a hand to and keeps his eyes open to new business opportunities.
It’s not that his personal wealth and businesses are spared from the global financial crisis. With his US investments in real estate, hotels, automobile dealership, banks and insurance, among others, and his Japanese operations in healthcare suffering steep drops in gross revenues, Yamagata’s strategy of giving even if it hurts may not make much sense to anyone at first. But, his team says, this is not his first time.
“Even during those times when he was having difficulties [starting his business in Japan], when he had nothing and he slept under his desk at work because he had no place to go, he supported me,†says John Nitta, a nephew, in an interview. John is now vice president of the Yamagata Corp.
Having three older deaf siblings, Yamagata had been asked by his mother to take care of his family. Aside from making good on that promise for years even under financial stress, he also visits and takes care, at one point, of 13 other families in Las Vegas not related to him as part of his community service commitments for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Full story.