Barron Hilton Socialites Information

William Barron Hilton (born October 23, 1927) is an American business magnate and hotel heir. The son and successor of hotelier Conrad Hilton, he is the retired chairman, president and chief executive officer of Hilton Hotels Corporation and chairman emeritus of the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation. Hilton was also a founder of the American Football League as the original owner of the Los Angeles Chargers, and helped forge the merger with the National Football League that created the Super Bowl.

Hilton was born in Dallas, Texas, to Mary Adelaide (née Barron) and Conrad Nicholson Hilton, founder of Hilton Hotels. Hilton grew up with three siblings: Conrad Nicholson Hilton, Jr., Eric Michael Hilton, and Constance Francesca Hilton. His father was of Norwegian and German descent, and his mother was from Kentucky.

He served in the Navy during World War II as a photographer. As a child, Hilton was fascinated by aviation, and learned to fly when he was 17. After his wartime discharge, he attended the University of Southern California Aeronautical School, where he earned his twin-engine rating at age 19.

Before joining his father in the hotel industry, Barron Hilton honed his business skills in a variety of entrepreneurial ventures. He acquired the Los Angeles-area distributorship of Vita-Pakt Citrus Products, co-founded MacDonald Oil Company, and founded Air Finance Corporation, one of the nation's first aircraft leasing businesses. In 1954, Barron was elected vice president of Hilton Hotels, running the company's franchise operations and creating the Carte Blanche credit card as a service to the company's customers.

In 1959, sportsman Lamar Hunt offered Hilton the Los Angeles franchise in the new American Football League. Hilton named his team the Chargers, but denies that he did it to create synergy with his new credit card business. A fan had nominated the name in a contest, and Hilton selected it because of the bugle call and "Charge!" cheer that was often sounded during USC football games at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. The Chargers began playing at the Coliseum in 1960, but in spite of winning the Western Division, the club found it difficult to compete for fans with the Rams of the National Football League in their own stadium. Hilton moved the team to San Diego in time for the 1961 season and played in tiny Balboa Stadium.

Hilton began working with the local newspapers to engender support for construction of a state-of-the-art stadium. Encouraged by San Diego Union sports editor Jack Murphy, among others, a referendum was passed in 1965, and the Chargers began play in new San Diego Stadium in 1967. With the availability of a new stadium, the city received a baseball expansion franchise from the National League, and the San Diego Padres began play in 1969. It was named Jack Murphy Stadium after Murphy's death in 1980, and is now known as SDCCU Stadium.

Hilton also served as AFL president in 1965, and helped forge the merger between the AFL and the NFL, announced in 1966, that created the Super Bowl. In all, the Chargers won five divisional titles, and one AFL Championship, during Hilton's six years at the helm of the club. In 1966, directors of Hilton Hotels Corporation asked Hilton to succeed his father as president and chief executive officer of the company, provided that he drop his football responsibilities. He sold his majority interest in the team for $10 million—a record for any professional sports franchise at the time—after an initial investment in a franchise fee of just $25,000.

With the death of the Bills' Ralph Wilson in 2014, Hilton became the last surviving member of the Foolish Club – the nickname the original AFL owners gave each other, as they absorbed the start-up expenses and player salaries necessary to compete with the established NFL.

Once charged with the responsibility for Hilton Hotels Corporation, Barron Hilton soon showed his father's genius for cost controls and real estate deals. In 1970, he convinced the board to expand into Las Vegas by purchasing the International and the Flamingo from financier Kirk Kerkorian. Hilton Hotels thus became the first company listed on the New York Stock Exchange to venture into the gaming market. Renamed the Las Vegas Hilton and the Flamingo Hilton, the two resorts tapped a new source of income from gambling in a state where it had been legal since 1931. Barron could also see that Las Vegas would become a leading convention destination, capitalizing on the company's strength in that important market segment.

Hilton personally introduced two innovations that have become standard features of casinos everywhere. Calling on his background in photography, he installed video cameras throughout the casinos to replace the "eye in the sky" system of observers peering through two-way mirrors in the ceiling. He also introduced progressive Pot o' Gold slot machines that produced a succession of world record jackpots, generating free publicity around the world.

Las Vegas would also become the self-proclaimed Entertainment Capital of the World. Of all the headliners to perform at the Hilton or the Flamingo, the most successful and spectacular was Elvis Presley. After a decade in the movies, he began performing in front of live audiences again in 1969 at the opening of the International (a few years later renamed the Las Vegas Hilton). He went on to star at the Las Vegas Hilton two months a year—performing two shows a night, seven nights a week—until shortly before his death in 1977. Presley set a world entertainment record at the Las Vegas Hilton for selling out 837 consecutive concerts. The Las Vegas Hilton also left its mark on boxing, hosting the famous upset of Muhammad Ali by Leon Spinks in 1978, and the 1986–1989 heavyweight tournament won by Mike Tyson that made him a household name.

The company's expansion into Nevada had an immediate impact on its bottom line. By 1972, the two resorts contributed 45 percent of the company's income (before interest income, interest expense, write down of investments and sales of properties), nearly matching the income from the other 160 Hilton hotels in the United States.

On the hotel front, in 1975, Hilton sold a 50 percent interest in six of the company's largest hotels to Prudential Insurance Company for $83 million. He took a leaseback to manage the properties, collecting lucrative management fees and a percentage of their gross profits. Perhaps more importantly, the sale proved that these hotels were worth double their book value, demonstrating the underlying value of the company's real estate holdings. The transaction also enhanced the value of the stock held by every HHC shareholder. Hilton used the proceeds to pay down high interest debt, and repurchase 20 percent of the company's stock—all at market rate—which was still trading well below the company's book value.

Hilton continued to expand the domestic hotel chain through franchising and the selective acquisition of management contracts and hotels in emerging markets. In 1977, he completed a hotel purchase that his father had initiated 28 years earlier. When Conrad Hilton bought the Waldorf-Astoria in 1949, he actually bought the hotel's operating company and its 30-year lease to run the hotel. The building, and the land under it, were still owned by the realty arm of the Penn Central Railroad. Knowing that the lease would expire in 1979, Hilton deftly negotiated to buy the hotel and real estate from the railroad. The landmark property, whose current value is estimated around $1 billion, was purchased by Hilton for just $35 million.

As competitors aggressively spread across the U.S. in the '80s, Barron held his own by rehabbing his own hotels and increasing revenues in Las Vegas. Through a series of massive additions to the Flamingo Hilton and the Las Vegas Hilton, the company nearly tripled its rooms in Las Vegas by 1990, from 2277 to 6703. He also launched Conrad International in the '80s, and Hilton Garden Inn in the '90s, adding two brands that covered important price points at opposite ends of lodging's pricing spectrum.

In contrast to his gamble on gaming, Hilton earned a well-deserved reputation as a financial conservative. After seeing his father struggle to overcome the effects of the Great Depression and World War II, he maintained the strongest balance sheet in the industry. Throughout his 30 years as CEO, he carried a low debt-to-capital ratio and a high credit rating, enabling him to gobble up such properties as Bally's Reno (formerly the MGM Grand Hotel and Casino-Reno). The 2000-room resort was opened in 1978 for $230 million, and purchased by Hilton in 1992 for $88 million. With strong cash flow and plenty of liquid investments on hand, he was able to weather the inevitable recessions and business interruptions that struck the industry from the mid-'60s to the mid-'90s.

Hilton continued as chairman of the board through the next decade as his hand-picked successor, Steve Bollenbach, dramatically expanded the company through a series of mergers and acquisitions. The advent of friendly capital markets in the late '90s enabled him to acquire such popular brands as Embassy Suites, Doubletree, Hampton Inn, Homewood Suites, Bally's and Caesars. Then, in 2005, he reacquired Hilton International, 38 years after it had been sold to TWA. With the company now strategically complete, Bollenbach spun off the gaming business, which merged with Harrah's in 2005 and was renamed Caesars Entertainment. In 2006, the gaming company was acquired by two private equity funds, Apollo Management and Texas Pacific Group, and still operates as Caesars Entertainment.

In the meantime, the hotel business continued to soar. With the best known and most respected name in the industry—and popular domestic brands ripe for expansion overseas—Hilton Hotels Corporation proved to be irresistible to The Blackstone Group. In 2007, the private equity firm purchased Hilton Hotels Corporation, consisting of 2,800 hotels with 480,000 rooms in 76 countries and territories. Blackstone paid $47.50 per share, a 32 percent premium over the July 2 closing price. The $26 billion, all-cash transaction included $7.5 billion of debt.

Host Hotels and Resorts veteran Chris Nassetta was hired to manage the company, which was renamed Hilton Worldwide, Inc. In the six years since it took over operations, Hilton Worldwide has expanded to 4041 hotels, with 665,667 rooms in 90 countries as of December 2013. With another 900 hotels in the development pipeline around the world, the company has all but assured the continued presence of the Hilton brand in the global lodging marketplace through the 21st Century and beyond. The privately held company just released an initial public offering that generated $2.3 billion in new investor capital, without selling any of Blackstone's 76 percent equity interest in the enterprise.

In 1979, Barron Hilton's father, Conrad Hilton, died at age 91. He left 13.5 million shares of Hilton Hotels Corporation stock—97 percent of his estate—to the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, a humanitarian charity which he had established in 1944.

Complete article available at this page.