Is Camp Allen and the Moguls Drifting Towards Irrelevance?

Authored by Jay Baage on July 7, 2006 - 5:45am.

Fuel up your jets, next week is the start of “Camp Allen”, the annual summer investment conference hosted by the investment banker Herbert A. Allen Jr. of Allen & Co. that caters to the crème de la crème of media, entertainment and tech managers.

July 11-16 the moguls will put on their best show for Wall Street in Sun Valley, Idaho. According to LA Weekly columnist Nikki Finke, this years agenda features Barry Diller, Rupert Murdoch and Sir Howard Stringer interviewed by Michael Eisner. Fifty corporate jets are expected to line up at nearby Friedman Memorial Airport.

Some hush-hush deal-making will likely be going on, but Finke points out that the meeting is not what it used to be back in the good old days when “those computer and telecommunications geeks with their pocket protectors were still working out of their garages, and the ability to green-light crap, sleep with starlets and get a table at the old Spago was the only price of admission to preen in Sun Valley.”