The Runaway Billionaire

Bill Austin built a fortune from medical devices, then set out on a crusade to help the poor hear. But while he was off hanging with movie stars and rock gods, his company descended into a cesspool of fraud, embezzlement and betrayal. A cautionary tale of a second act to do good— gone woefully bad.

- Michela Tindera

Red carpets are rare in St. Paul, Minnesota. But last summer, Ben Affleck, Caitlyn Jenner, the first lady of Zambia and 1,500 other do-gooders filed into the Saint Paul RiverCentre to raise money for people in countries like Malaysia, Ghana and El Salvador to get hearing aids. Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler performed “Dream On,” but the gala’s ringleader, no doubt, was the billionaire Bill Austin. From under a cloud of white hair, Austin stood onstage, grinning, and thanked his fourth wife, Tani: “You have lifted me higher. You have allowed me to be part of a greater gift, to touch more lives than I ever could alone.”

Over the past 50 years, Austin has built an estimated $1.6 billion fortune with Starkey Hearing Technologies, expanding a small shop into the largest hearing-aid manufacturer in the U.S., with estimated revenues of some $850 million. He succeeded by working nearly nonstop to create—and sell—innovative products like his customized in-the-ear hearing aids. Some of the planet’s most visible people—including five presidents, two popes and Mother Teresa— were Starkey customers.

But Austin’s new ambitions are even loftier: to help the world’s poor hear. Over the past dozen years, he has traveled roughly 25 days a month with his nonprofit, the Starkey Hearing Foundation, handing out hearing aids to the penniless, a quest he says is directed by God. It’s a worthy goal: Around 466 million people worldwide—and a third of adults over 65—suffer from disabling hearing loss. It’s also a way for the 76-year-old Starkey CEO to transform himself from a pedestrian midwestern medical-device maker into a cosmopolitan, world-improving type of billionaire.