Charity Doesn’t Begin, or End, at Home for TCI Chief Malone

Tele-Communications Inc.’s John Malone said he would give most of his $1.5-billion fortune to an educational charity rather than to his children.

“What are you going to do with it?” Malone said in Tuesday’s edition of the Rocky Mountain News. “How many cars . . . and vacation homes can you own?”

Malone said he has earmarked most of his fortune for the Malone Family Foundation, a private nonprofit organization to benefit education.

Malone owns more than 42 million shares of TCI and related company stock with a current market value of about $1.5 billion.

The 56-year-old head of the nation’s biggest cable company said his wife, Leslie, and their two grown children are not interested in being super-rich.

“My kids basically don’t want a lot of wealth,” Malone said. “I think your kids are destroyed by too much wealth, not enhanced by it. It’s one thing to give them the responsibility for looking after it and giving it to others. But it’s another thing to [risk turning] them into jet-setters.”

TCI delivers programs into about 14 million homes--or about one in every four U.S. homes that subscribe to cable TV.