High stakes and satellites: Portrait of a billion-dollar deal maker.
ColoradoBiz › Vol. 29 Nbr. 2, February 2002
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Charlie Ergen, chief executive of EchoStar Communications Corp.
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High stakes and satellites: Portrait of a billion-dollar deal maker.
LANDING AT No. 22 on the 2001 Forbes 400 list of the richest Americans, Charlie Ergen, co-founder and chief executive of Littleton-based EchoStar Communications Corp., is in appropriate company.
Media mogul Rupert Murdoch, whom Ergen has bucked twice in his rise to the stratosphere of the satellite TV industry, is No. 21, and financier George Soros, a maverick of world finance, is No. 23. CHAPTER 5: CUTTING CABLE CHARLIE ERGEN WHEELED THE MARK V LINCOLN CONTINENTAL DOWN A DARK STRETCH OF COLORADO HIGHWAY PAST MIDNIGHT. Jim DeFranco, his business partner and poker-playing buddy, rode shotgun. Rumbling along behind the car was a trailer with a 10-foot satellite dish on its side, chained down, like a concave fiberglass sail. It was December of 1980. Ergen and DeFranco, both 27 years old, were about to crash into the satellite TV business. Their first customer was a wealthy rancher in Pagosa Springs, a town in southwest Colorado, 25 miles north of th...See the full content of this document
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