New York--- credited with helping transform Las Vegas into a gambler's paradise, has died aged 98.
Kerkorian, who also amassed major stakes in movie and auto companies, passed away in Los Angeles of undisclosed causes late Monday, according to MGM Resorts International, the casino giant he founded.
Born into an Armenian family in Fresno, California, Kerkorian rolled the dice throughout his life, almost always to great riches.
He gambled on airline travel, Hollywood pictures and the auto industry en route to accumulating a fortune estimated last year at $4 billion.
Most of all, Kerkorian hit the jackpot in Las Vegas, where he developed the first mega-resorts and beat the odds by controlling the main hotels on the famous Las Vegas strip.
Kerkorian kept building his casino empire well into his 80s, overseeing the $4.4 billion purchase of Mirage Resorts from rival Stephen Wynn in 2000 and buying the Mandalay Resort Group in 2004 for $4.8 billion.
Kerkorian did not give up his board seat at MGM International until 2011, when he was appointed chairman emeritus only weeks before his 94th birthday.
At the time of his death, he held 18.6 percent of the company through his Beverly Hills investment company Tracinda, making him MGM's biggest shareholder.
"Mr. Kerkorian was a quiet but powerful force behind the transformation of the Las Vegas Strip into one of the world's most popular tourist destinations," MGM Resorts said in a statement.
"He was also a generous humanitarian who donated hundreds of millions of dollars to charities worldwide."
- Early Vegas payoff -
Kerkorian was born in 1917 to Armenian immigrants who found fleeting wealth during the raisin boom of World War I, only to lose it a few years later.
After his family moved to Los Angeles, Kerkorian dropped out of school after the eighth grade, and worked odd jobs as a newspaper delivery boy, a bouncer in a bowling alley and an amateur boxer.
During World War II, he went to Canada and joined the Royal Air Force, delivering unarmed Canadian bombers to European bases on "suicide runs" for $1,000 a trip.
After the war, he started a small charter Los Angeles-Las Vegas air service which he sold in 1968 to the TransAmerica Corporation for $85 million worth of stock.
In the meanwhile, in 1962 he bought 30 hectares (80 acres) across from the Flamingo hotel in Las Vegas for $960,000. He rented the land to the developer of what became Caesars Palace.
In 1969, on another plot, Kerkorian built the International, at the time the world's largest hotel, and then topped that in 1973 with the larger MGM Grand.
In 1986 Kerkorian sold that hotel, which was renamed Bally's, and built a new MGM Grand, which opened in 1993 with another record-setting 5,000 rooms.
AFP
