Tracinda Corporation is a private investment corporation owned by Kirk Kerkorian. Major investments include a minority interest of MGM Mirage (See below for discussion of ownership change). Tracinda is headquartered on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills. The company is named after Kerkorian's daughters, Tracy and Linda.
Tracinda formerly owned ten percent of General Motors; it sold all of its stock in November 2006.[1]
Tracinda made headlines on April 5, 2007 by offering $4.5 billion to buy Chrysler, causing the shares of DaimlerChrysler to soar 5.3%. Kerkorian was assisted in this deal by his aide and employee, Jerome York, who had previously served as chief financial officer for Chrysler. Ultimately, the bid failed and Chrysler was sold to Cerberus Capital Management.
Interestingly, Kerkorian also bid in 1995 to take over Chrysler, unsuccessfully, and was assisted at that time by York, as well as Chrysler's former chief executive officer Lee Iacocca. The deal fell apart after Kerkorian and Tracinda were largely locked out of financing for their offer after heavy lobbying by Chrysler against the bid on Wall Street.
On May 16, 2008, Tracinda contacted Ford shareholders in a bid to buy 20,000,000 shares by June 4, 2008, at a rate of $8.50 a share. Later on, the bid was processed, and the Company bought the share through Ahmed Adnan, an investor.
On Oct 20, 2008, Tracinda sold more than 7 million shares of Ford at an average price of roughly $2.44 a share.
On Dec 29, 2008, Tracinda sold his remaining shares in Ford Motor Company.
In May 2009 following the completion of a $1 billion dollar stock offering by MGM Mirage, Kerkorian and Tracinda lost their majority ownership of the gaming company, dropping from 53.8 percent to 39 percent and even after pledging to purchase 10 percent of the new stock offering they now remain minority owners.[2][3]
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