Thursday, March 28, 2024

JLO Billionaire Benefactor New Yorker Profile Leaves Out Good Stuff

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I told you last October that the single biggest donor to Jennifer Lopez’s tax free Maribel Foundation was hedge fund king Ray Dalio. The Greenwich, Connecticut based billionaire wrote a check to Maribel for $250,000 in 2008. Now I can tell you he also wrote a second check, in 2009, for $450,000. That brings his total donation to JLO’s fund  to $700,000 over two years. Lopez herself only put in $204,000 during the same period. (There’s no public filing yet for 2009 or 2010.)

This would seem like a big deal since Dalio’s business is the cult like Bridgewater hedge fund that runs $80 billion worth of investments. In a recent profile of Dalio in The New Yorker, John Cassidy offers up a puff piece on Dalio and never mentions JLO or even Dalio’s extreme interest in Transcendental Meditation. Dalio gave $1.23 million to director David Lynch’s TM Foundation in 2008 and another $2.1 million in 2009. The man clearly believes in having a mantra. He’s devoted to TM, yet this somehow escaped Cassidy.

Dalio also put $45 million into his Dalio Family Foundation in 2009– $17 million of which to charities including $2 million to the press-shy Robin Hood Foundation. None of this was in The New Yorker piece. Also left out was the tidbit that Dalio’s wife, Barbara, is reportedly a direct descendant of the old school money Vanderbilt-Whitney families. So much for his “moving to the country and starting a business out of a barn.”

Maribel Foundation, meanwhile, donated $450,000 to a Los Angeles children’s hospital last year.

Roger Friedman
Roger Friedmanhttps://www.showbiz411.com
Roger Friedman began his Showbiz411 column in April 2009 after 10 years with Fox News, where he created the Fox411 column. His movie reviews are carried by Rotten Tomatoes, and he is a member of both the movie and TV branches of the Critics Choice Awards. His articles have appeared in dozens of publications over the years including New York Magazine, where he wrote the Intelligencer column in the mid 90s and covered the OJ Simpson trial, and Fox News (when it wasn't so crazy) where he covered Michael Jackson. He is also the writer and co-producer of "Only the Strong Survive," a selection of the Cannes, Sundance, and Telluride Film festivals, directed by DA Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus.
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