Guy Laliberté

Guy Laliberté
Country:	Canada
Organization:	Space Adventures
selected on	June 2009
Calls:	1 space flight
Begin:	September 30, 2009
Landing:	October 11, 2009
Time in space:	10d 21h 17min
retired on	October 11, 2009
Space flights
Soyuz TMA-16 / Soyuz TMA-14 (2009)

Guy Laliberté , OC , CQ (born September 2, 1959 in Québec ) is a Canadian artist, billionaire, space tourist and founder of Cirque du Soleil .

Life

As a teenager, Laliberté played the accordion and harmonica in the folk band La Gueule du loup . At the age of 18 he traveled through Europe and earned his living as a street artist , among other things as a juggler and fire eater.

Back in Canada, he joined the stilt walking group Les Echassiers De Baie-Saint-Paul in 1979 . From July 1982 he organized performances by the artist group La Fēte Foraine in the province of Quebec.

In 1983, Laliberté received $ 1.5 million from the provincial government to organize a street show in several cities for the 450th anniversary of Quebec. To this end, he founded the Cirque du Soleil together with Daniel Gauthier , which continued to exist after the anniversary year and toured Canada. From 1987 appearances in Las Vegas , Santa Monica and San Diego followed . The Cirque du Soleil then expanded into several groups that went on tours as well as performed in specially built theaters.

The Cirque du Soleil, which dispensed with classic circus elements such as ring and animals, was a great commercial success and became a company with several thousand employees on several continents. In 2000, Laliberté paid off its partner Gauthier and has since held 95% of the group's shares. In 2008 he sold 20% to Istithmar (Arabic for investment ), a private equity firm from Dubai, and to Nakheel Properties , a real estate company from Dubai. In April 2015 he sold the controlling majority to the Texas investment company TPG Capital. Guy Laliberté retains a minority stake of 10%.

Guy Laliberté was one of the wealthiest Canadian entrepreneurs in at least 2009. He was then number 261 on Forbes magazine's list of the wealthiest people in the world . By 2019 it had dropped to 2057.

poker

At the end of April 2007, Laliberté reached the final table at the Five Star World Poker Classic , the main event of the World Poker Tour , at the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas . He finished fourth and won just under $ 700,000 in prize money . In July 2012 , as part of the World Series of Poker , Laliberté organized the hitherto most expensive poker tournament in the world called The Big One for One Drop . The buy-in was $ 1 million per player. For every buy-in, $ 111,111 went to the One Drop Foundation . Laliberté himself made it to the final table of the tournament and received just under $ 2 million for fifth place. The tournament was held as part of the WSOP in 2014 and is part of the 2018 tournament schedule. The event was played in Monte-Carlo in October 2016 and, with a buy-in of one million euros, was the most expensive poker tournament in the world to date. Laliberté also organized the High Roller for One Drop and Little One for One Drop for the WSOP , from whose buy-ins donations also go to the One Drop Foundation .

Laliberté also played online on the Full Tilt Poker platform under the nicknames lady marmelade , patatino and noatima , but lost around $ 26 million there. He took part in the fourth season of the poker television format High Stakes Poker , which at times had over five million dollars on the table.

Space tourist

On June 4, 2009, Space Adventures announced that Guy Laliberté would fly to the International Space Station as a space tourist on board the Russian Soyuz TMA-16 spacecraft . Laliberté calls this flight a Poetic Social Mission - a poetic social task. It was launched on September 30, 2009 and returned on October 11, 2009 with Soyuz TMA-14 . He also used the flight into space to advertise the “One Drop” water project . So he symbolically took a drop of water during the space flight. Various international artists and celebrities will support him with television appearances broadcast worldwide on October 10th. The excursion cost about 23.7 million euros and took place on the occasion of his fiftieth birthday.

Social

Laliberté is the founder of the One Drop Foundation , which aims to give everyone access to clean drinking water. Laliberté's financial contribution amounts to 100 million dollars, another sponsor is the aid organization Oxfam .

Honors

• Honorary doctorate from Laval University (Québec) (2008)
• Entrepreneur of the Year (2007)
• Order of Canada (2004)
• Ordre national du Québec (1997)

Laliberté was the 2004 Time magazine to the 100 most influential people counted.

Web links

Commons : Guy Laliberté  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Cirque du Soleil: Biography ( Memento from May 22, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
• enotes.com: Biography ( Memento from January 2, 2013 in the web archive archive.today )
• Lalibertés Mission Log ( Memento from February 5, 2010 in the Internet Archive )

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Financial investors intercept Cirque du Soleil. In: derStandard.at. Retrieved November 6, 2015 . 
2. ↑ Financial circus: mutual funds grab Cirque du Soleil. In: www.handelsblatt.com. Retrieved November 6, 2015 . 
3. ↑ The World's Billionaires # 261 Guy Laliberte. Forbes, March 11, 2009; archived from the original on March 15, 2009 ; accessed on June 23, 2009 . 
4. ↑ # 2057 Guy Laliberté . Forbes, accessed June 17, 2019.
5. ↑ Fifth Annual Five Star World Poker Classic ($ 25,000 + 500 WPT - No Limit Hold'em Championship) in the Hendon Mob Poker Database, accessed April 1, 2017 (English)
6. ↑ Fact Sheet - The Big One for One Drop (English; PDF)
7. ↑ 43rd World Series of Poker (WSOP) 2012 ($ 1,000,000 The Big One for One Drop (Event # 55)) in the Hendon Mob Poker Database, accessed April 1, 2017 (English)
8. ↑ € 1 Million One Drop Extravaganza - 24 players left in the world's most expensive tournament on pokerolymp.com on October 15, 2016, accessed on April 1, 2017
9. ↑ Guy Laliberté shortly before billions in revenue from the sale of Cirque du Soleil on pokerolymp.com on April 16, 2015, accessed on April 1, 2017
10. ^ Space Adventures Announces Founder of Cirque du Soleil as 1st Canadian Private Space Explorer. Space Adventures, June 4, 2009, accessed June 4, 2009 . 
11. ↑ Soyuz rocket launched with new ISS crew. Sputnik News, September 30, 2009, accessed September 30, 2009 . 
12. ↑ AFP: Ex-circus artist Laliberté advertises water protection on the ISS , October 11, 2009
13. ^ Madeleine Huberdeau: Save our blue planet. (PDF; 142 kB) Desjaerdins, accessed on September 13, 2012 (English): "When setting up One Drop, I spent $ 100 million to fund the administrative end of things"