For much of the 1980s ronald Perelman was one of America's most feared corporate raiders. Then came the dark years of the late 1990s—his abusive relationship with the faded-luster franchise of Revlon; the bankruptcy of Marvel Entertainment, which wiped out a stake once worth $2.1 billion; a divorce (his third); and an ill-fated deal with Sunbeam that turned a $680 million investment into nothing. Perelman, 62, says the string of setbacks, especially Marvel, marked the lowest point of his long career, which spans 27 years and 38 big deals. He still winces from the fallout over the divorce in 1997 from his third wife, Patricia Duff, who demanded $7 million in annual child support for their then-3-year-old daughter (and ended up getting less than $150,000 a year). Perelman got pilloried for testifying that a child could be fed on $3 a day. "People said I was a terrible human being and that I was starving my daughter," he says. Howard Gittis, his longtime consigliere, recalls: "Emotionally, to come to the office every day was difficult."
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