M as in Money

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A frenetic businessman who smokes five packs of cigarettes and averages 17 cups of coffee a day, Kauffman currently is converting from hard sell to soft living. His stock in the company is worth $50 million, which allows him and Wife Muriel to "spend all we make and more besides." The Kauffmans spend their money on a 28-room mansion in Kansas City's Mission Hills suburb. It is equipped with His and Her poodles, an Olympic-sized swimming pool, pistol range and organ, and is decorated with Florentine-leather walls and gold-leaf ceilings. The Kauffmans frequently give each other rings and jewelry. Muriel recently gave her spouse a watch with his initials on the case in diamonds. "She taught me how to live with money," says Kauffman of his wife, who graduated with an economics degree from Canada's McMaster University and is treasurer of the drug company.

Kauffman, who still laments that he never had a bicycle as a boy, has made up for that by buying a Falcon jet in which the couple fly to football games or to New York and California to watch some of their 23 racehorses run. "I never really felt opulent until I bought that," he says of the jet. The Kauffmans intend to buy a breeding farm for their horses, are also anxious to dabble in another sport. Waving $4,000,000 in earnest money, Kauffman hopes to bring a major-league baseball team back to Kansas City to replace the recently departed Athletics.