John Carl Malone (born March 7, 1941) is an American billionaire businessman, landowner, and philanthropist. He was chief executive officer (CEO) of Tele-Communications Inc. (TCI), a cable and media giant, for twenty-four years from 1973 to 1996. Malone is now chairman and largest voting shareholder of Liberty Media, Liberty Global, and Qurate Retail Group (formerly known as Liberty Interactive), and also owns 7% of Lionsgate and Starz Inc. He was interim CEO of Liberty Media, until succeeded by former Microsoft and Oracle CFO Greg Maffei.
Malone is ranked as the second largest private landowner in the United States, possessing 2.2 million acres (3,437 square miles), which is more than twice the size of Rhode Island. According to The Land Report's annual rankings, Malone ranked as the largest landowner in America from 2011 to 2021.
Early life and education
John C. Malone was born on March 7, 1941, in Milford, Connecticut. His father was Daniel L. Malone, an engineer. Malone is of Irish heritage, his family originating in County Cork. Malone is a Catholic.
In 1959, Malone graduated from Hopkins School in New Haven, Connecticut. In 1963, he graduated from Yale University with a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering and economics, where he was a Phi Beta Kappa and National Merit scholar. In 1964, Malone graduated from Johns Hopkins University with a master's degree in industrial management. He received a master's in electrical engineering at an NYU program at Bell Labs in 1965 before receiving his PhD in operations research at Johns Hopkins in 1967.
Business career
In 1963, Malone began his business career at Bell Telephone Laboratories of AT&T, working in economic planning and research and development. In 1968, he joined McKinsey & Company, and in 1970, became group vice president at General Instrument Corporation (GI). He was later president of Jerrold Electronics, a GI subsidiary. For twenty-four years, from 1973 to 1996, Malone served as president and CEO of Tele-Communications Inc. (TCI).
Malone is on the boards of directors for Bank of New York Mellon, Expedia.com, Charter Communications, Warner Bros. Discovery, and Lions Gate Entertainment Corp. Malone is chairman emeritus of Cable Television Laboratories, Inc. and chairman of Liberty Global, Inc., and formerly the DirecTV Group. His rise to chairman at Liberty Global was contentious at times.
In 2005, Malone held 32 percent of the shares in the media company News Corporation, and although only about half were voting shares, Rupert Murdoch reportedly had concerns that he might lose control of his company to Malone, and tried to oust him from the firm with a "poison pill" strategy. He was director of the National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA) from 1974 to 1977, and again from 1980 to 1993. During the 1977–1978 term, Malone was the NCTA's treasurer.
In 1992, Malone coined the term 500-channel universe to describe a future media environment where a vast number of TV channels would be available, by eliminating the need for broadcast radio channels as a scarce resource.
In business dealings Malone has been dubbed "Darth Vader", a nickname allegedly given to him by Al Gore when Malone was the head of TCI.
In 1994, Wired portrayed Malone on their cover as "Mad Max" from The Road Warrior (also known as Mad Max 2), with an interview describing his battles with the FCC. He is also known as the "Cable Cowboy".
Bloomberg estimated him to be worth over US$9 billion in May 2021.
Land ownership
Malone owns Silver Spur Ranches, a ranching and beef company which includes the Silver Spur Ranch in Encampment, Wyoming, Bell Ranch and the TO Ranch in New Mexico, Bridlewood Farm, a thoroughbred breeding, training and racing operation in Ocala, Florida; as well as ranches in Walden, Colorado, and Kiowa, Colorado. His international real estate holdings include Humewood Castle and Castlemartin House and Estate, both in Ireland.
, he surpassed Ted Turner as the largest individual private landowner in the US, owning of land, much of which is in Maine, Colorado, New Mexico, and Wyoming. Malone held the top spot as America's largest landowner for 10 years, according to the 2022 The Land Report's ranking of the top 100 U.S. landowners. In 2021, the ranking listed Malone as the second largest landowner behind the Emmerson Family.
Philanthropy
In 2000, Malone gave $24 million to the Yale School of Engineering & Applied Science in New Haven for the construction of Yale's Daniel L. Malone Engineering Center, named in honor of his father.