He once reached number six on the Forbes rich list, but does not use email or own a mobile; he wears western gear rather than suits and runs unnoticed in local marathons.
He settles any legal dispute - and there have been many - with whatever money is necessary rather
than appear in court or the newspapers, including those he owns.
His devout Christianity and conservative political views are matched only by his business acumen. He has not given an interview since 1974 and remains America's most mysterious tycoon.
Philip Anschutz, who at 42 became America's youngest billionaire, lives in Colorado - between his house in the upscale suburb of Polo Club and his ranch in the east of the Rocky Mountain state.
But his most visible fortune is based in the city whose downtown area he has transformed, Los Angeles, even though Anschutz does not have an address there.
He owns the multi-facility Staples Centre and LA Live complex, home to five professional sport "franchises", as Americans call them, including basketball's LA Lakers. Galaxy, one of his football teams, employers of David Beckham, play at another of his venues, the Home Depot Centre.
While famously entertaining the then-British Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott at a game between Galaxy and the San Jose Earthquakes, Anschutz was asked by Prescott which team he wanted to win. "He said it didn't matter because he owned the two teams," Prescott recalled.
To call Anschutz a titan of the sports and entertainment industries is to ignore his many other interests and the roots of his wealth in the all-American fields of oil and the railways. His style is on show in London this week as the O2 arena prepares to host the ATP World Tour tennis finals.
Anschutz is doing to tennis in Britain what he does all over America and the world: he entwines sport and entertainment. And this he does with an undeclared motto of "Own the Event" - the venue, the team, as much as you can own - while getting others to promote it.
Carl Anschutz, Philip's grandfather, emigrated from Russia to Kansas and quickly established the Farmers State Bank in a little town called Russell.
Philip's father, Fred, grew up there and Philip was born in 1939. After graduating in business studies from the University of Kansas, Anschutz followed his father into the oil business. There followed a story which, if true, clearly illustrates his enterprise.
Anschutz was woken at 2am on October 9, 1967 to be told that a well in Wyoming, in which he owned an interest, had blown. He arrived by plane three hours later, persuaded a farmer to rent him a pick-up truck, drove around buying options on leases adjacent to the blown well and called in the celebrated Red Adair to fight the ensuing blaze.
Then came the stroke of genius: the next call was to Universal Pictures, offering them rights to film the calamity - the result of which became a scene in Hellfighters starring John Wayne.
Anschutz's other reluctant moment in the limelight was the famous fall from grace of his Qwest communications group, which he had turned into one of the United States' largest telecommunications firms.
Anschutz was accordingly at his richest in 2000, during the telecom boom - until four Qwest executives were arrested and pleaded guilty to insider trading and Qwest lost US$95 billion in share value. Anschutz always maintained that he knew nothing of the wrongdoing.
But Anschutz's high profile is due to the holdings of the Anschutz Entertainment Group, AEG, which set up shop in Los Angeles in 1996, and planned to bring Michael Jackson to London for 50 performances.
When Jackson died, AEG offered a "souvenir ticket" to anyone who didn't claim the refund; even the biggest non-event in entertainment history needed a silver lining.
Jack Kyser, an economist in LA, likens Anschutz to "the Wizard of Oz - the man behind the curtain, pulling levers. Nobody sees him, yet he has a huge impact".
Bob Scanlan, a banker who has worked with Anschutz, calls him "an alchemist" and adds: "Phil would rank up there in my humourless hall of fame."
His two charitable foundations - the Random Acts of Kindness Foundation and Foundation for a Better Life - have an avowedly Christian and conservative moral mission.
His boldest venture into the film industry to date was a US$150 million funding of the movie of the Christian allegory The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
AEG now ranks second only to Disney in the world entertainment industry - to which it poses a new age, sports-orientated challenge. There has been much grumbling in LA that despite his keen personal interest in painting and handsome collection of American art, Anschutz gives markedly little to local culture, unlike Disney.
To which Anschutz coughed up a modest million ... to the Walt Disney Concert Hall.
Just to show to whom the future belongs, Mickey Mouse or not.
THE ANSCHUTZ LOW-DOWN
*Born: 1939, in Kansas. His father, Fred Anschutz, was a wealthy land investor who owned ranches in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming. Mother Marian Pfister Anschutz raised the family as devout Christians.
*Best of times: His 1971 acquisition of 3.6 million hectares of farmland along the Utah-Wyoming border propelled him into the super-wealthy set in the early 1980s with the discovery of a billion-barrel oil field, selling a half-interest to Mobil for US$500 million ($685 million) in 1982.
*Worst of times: The 2002 September issue of Forbes branded Anschutz America's "greediest executive", a claim that seemed prescient when he agreed to repay US$4.4 million for accepting valuable IPO shares from Salomon Smith Barney investment bank in exchange for his firm Qwest's banking business.
- OBSERVER
He once reached number six on the Forbes rich list, but does not use email or own a mobile; he wears western gear rather than suits and runs unnoticed in local marathons.
He settles any legal dispute - and there have been many - with whatever money is necessary rather
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