Ronald Perelman

SPHERE OF INFLUENCE: Perelman has one of the most disparate portfolios of any billionaire, with holdings in everything from Revlon to educational-testing-products manufacturer Scantron—a few of which always seem to be giving him fits. The latest: AM General, which makes the Hummer and Humvee. G.M. owns the Hummer brand, and in an age when it takes a small inheritance to fill the behemoth’s tank, the company is expected to drop it. Meanwhile, Perelman’s most public investment, Revlon, declared a rare quarterly profit in the second quarter of this year.

BOATING BUDDIES: Denzel Washington, Penny Marshall, and Saif Qaddafi (son of Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi) attended Perelman’s birthday party on his 188-foot Ultima III yacht in St. Barth’s in December.

EX-SPOUSAL RELATIONS i: Third wife Patricia Duff re-entered the picture this year when Caleigh, her 13-year-old daughter with Perelman, sought a protective order (aided by Perelman’s lawyers) against her mother. (Duff counters that the animosity stems from normal teenage angst.)

EX-SPOUSAL RELATIONS ii: Perelman, 65, exercised the naming rights he received from a $20 million donation to his alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania, renaming Logan Hall after his second wife, the late gossip columnist Claudia Cohen. It is located in the Perelman Quadrangle. In July, he also sued Cohen’s brother over her fortune, which daughter Samantha is entitled to.

EX-SPOUSAL RELATIONS iii: Perelman and fourth wife Ellen Barkin are locked in a legal squabble over the funding of her production company, Applehead. He claims Barkin and her brother are misappropriating Applehead’s capital; she alleges that Perelman didn’t cough up the cash he promised.

CASTING CALL: Told CNBC’s Donny Deutsch that he would want Robert Downey Jr. to play him in a biopic.