6 days ago
Cavs Owner Dan Gilbert Wants to Donate His Billions—and Walk Again
When the company behind Rocket Mortgage—the largest retail home loan originator in the US— went public in 2020, Americans enjoying cheap money and still-warm stimulus checks were happily refinancing at a rapid clip. The lender, then called Quicken Loans, generated the vast majority of parent Rocket Cos.' $15.7 billion in revenue that year, making majority owner Dan Gilbert one of the richest people on Earth. In the five years since, the federal benchmark interest rate has ballooned to a punitive 4.5% on the upper end, and analysts estimate Rocket will record about $5.5 billion in annual revenue in 2025, roughly a third of its pandemic high. Its stock is down almost 30% since the initial public offering. 'I've got to stay positive. There's nothing else you can do when you don't have any control,' says Gilbert, 63. 'You got to play the cards you're given.'
The billionaire founder and chairman of Detroit-based Rocket knows a thing or two about that. Six years ago, he suffered an ischemic stroke on the right side of his brain while watching a light show over the city's river. He lost the use of the left side of his body and has been undergoing intensive physical rehabilitation ever since (while taking testosterone shots to stimulate muscle growth and stem cell injections to turbocharge his brain's healing). Just recently, he took a few unaided steps without a cane. 'It's been a rough, rough ride, a slow comeback,' he says in a Detroit conference room adorned with paraphernalia and trophies from the Cleveland Cavaliers, the NBA team he purchased in 2005. Gilbert uses a wheelchair much of the time, standing only with an occupational therapist by his side to greet a visiting reporter, and he apologizes that he can't take the titular 'walk' with Bloomberg Businessweek on his feet.
