Frank Giustra

The Money Dilemma recounts Frank Giustra’s extraordinary life—from poverty to riches, indulgence to social responsibility, Type-A drive to peace and contentment—with soul-searching honesty and a rare gift for storytelling. The son of a poor, hard-rock miner, Giustra grew up in southern Italy, Buenos Aires, and British Columbia. From a young age, he was driven to make money. After learning the brokerage trade at Merrill Lynch, he joined Yorkton Securities and turned it into a mining-finance powerhouse, making a fortune in the process. Then, at 39, he retired.

Doing so brought on an urgent and perplexing question: If you’re poor, and you focus on making money, and you make lots of it early on, then what? How and where do you find meaning in the rest of your life? Giustra went on to create the biggest independent studio in Hollywood—Lionsgate. It was a gruelling four-year project that almost broke him. Returning to investment finance, he built a small gold company into one of the world’s biggest, along the way launching dozens of other resource companies. His recent prediction that the US dollar would weaken and gold would strengthen has made him wealthy all over again.

But it was his work in poor countries that opened his eyes to inequality, steered him toward philanthropy, and led him to his life’s purpose. He donated over $130 million to Clinton-Giustra initiatives, partnering with former US President Bill Clinton to mitigate AIDS in Africa and alleviate poverty in Latin America. Today, after a controversial break with Clinton, he charts his own philanthropic course with Acceso and the Giustra Foundation.

The Money Dilemma recounts Giustra’s gradual understanding that the best use of excess wealth is to seek to improve the world that our children will inherit. It’s a warts-and-all account of a uniquely fascinating, never-boring life.