Category: Business

• Boeing needs a hands-on CEO, says Tim Clark, the president of Emirates.
• "I've always said it should be an aerospace engineer. It would help a lot," Clark told Bloomberg.
• Clark is an aviation veteran whose airline is the largest buyer of Boeing's widebody jets.

Boeing needs a hands-on leader who understands the business if it wants to get out of the rut it is in, says Tim Clark, the president of Emirates.

"You need a true leader, a strong person, a great communicator who understands the business," Clark, whose company is the largest buyer of Boeing's widebody jets, told Bloomberg's Guy Johnson on Sunday. The aviation veteran was speaking at the sidelines of the International Air Transport Association's annual meeting in Dubai.

"I've always said it should be an aerospace engineer. It would help a lot. I've often used Alan Mulally as the example of that," Clark said, referencing the former CEO of Boeing Commercial Airplanes and Ford.

Mulally served as the chief executive of Boeing's commercial airplane programs from 2001 to 2006. The aerospace engineer and MIT graduate was lauded for his turnaround of Ford when he ran the automaker from 2006 to 2014.

Boeing's CEO needs to take an active interest in its manufacturing operations, Clark said, adding that the company's leader needs to start "going into factories and understanding the processes."

"The way we run Emirates is that we have fingerprints on everything. There's not a thing that goes on, on a day to day basis without us knowing something about it," Clark told Bloomberg.

"So they need somebody who's hands-on, is a great communicator, great leader, and people will respect and follow because that person understands the issues," he continued.

'Finance is not difficult. Engineering is.'

Clark believes Boeing's pursuit of saving costs by outsourcing manufacturing landed it in its predicament today.

"If you spend 10 or 15 years trying to strip out from your supply chain it's likely things will start to happen in terms of quality issues," Clark told The Telegraph in an interview on Sunday.

"You cannot take your eye off the ball in our business. Certainly manufacturers cannot do that," he said. "Finance is not difficult. Engineering is."

Representatives for Boeing did not immediately respond to a request for comment from BI sent outside regular business hours.

Boeing has come under the spotlight following repeated quality-assurance lapses.

In January, a door plug flew off a two-month-old Boeing 737 Max 9 aircraft during an Alaskan Airlines flight from Oregon to California. The company's CEO, Dave Calhoun, said in March he would be stepping down at the end of this year.

Stephanie Pope, a third-generation Boeing employee who was put in charge of Boeing's commercial airplanes division in March, is widely seen as one of the frontrunners for Calhoun's position.

During its earnings call in April, Boeing said it had burned through $3.9 billion in cash in the first quarter of this year. The company posted a net loss of $355 million for the same quarter.

Clark said it will take years for Boeing to sort out its quality and safety issues, per Bloomberg.

"If you ask me, this will be a five-year hiatus starting from now. So I don't think they will recapture their production lines on all aircraft types," he said.

• Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang highlighted robots — again — at a Taiwan tech conference Sunday.
• He predicted mass production of self-driving cars and humanoid robots in the coming years.
• Nvidia makes software and hardware for robots.

Jensen Huang really loves robots.

The Nvidia CEO paraded nine human-like robots on stage earlier this year. He highlighted them again in a Sunday speech at a Taiwan tech conference, saying that two kinds of robots in particular will be "very high volume." These are self-driving cars and humanoid robots, he said.

"The next wave of AI is physical AI. AI that understands the laws of physics. AI that can work among us," a black jacket-clad Huang said. "Everything is going to be robotic. All of the factories will be robotic. The factories will orchestrate robots and those robots will be building products that are robotic."

Chip giant Nvidia has much to gain from wide robot adoption: Its software and hardware can be used in production, training, and ongoing use of the robots.

The company built an operating system for self-driving cars and will start producing cars in a partnership with Mercedes next year, Huang said Sunday.

Nvidia also created an operating system for robots to learn in virtual environments. Before robots work in the physical world, their systems can be refined in a "robot gym," Huang said, where they fine-tune everything from motor skills, like grasping objects, to navigating environments, like moving around warehouses.

"The easiest robot to adapt into the world are human or robots because we built the world for us. We also have the most amount of data to train these robots than other types of robots because we have the same physique," Huang said.

In March, he called building models for robots "one of the most exciting problems to solve in AI today."

The company is also investing in robot startups, such as $50 million to Figure AI, which is building robots for dangerous warehouse jobs.

"This isn't the future. This is happening now," Huang said on Sunday.

Nvidia's stock is up 180% in the last year.

GameStop shares surged ahead of Monday's opening bell after trader Keith Gill, who posts on social media under the aliases "Roaring Kitty" and "DeepFuckingValue," revealed he holds a $116 million stake in the struggling retailer.

The stock was up 84% in premarket trading shortly before 5 a.m. Eastern Time after an account snapshot posted on Reddit's r/SuperStonk forum revealed that Gill holds five million GameStop shares.

Late on Sunday the trader also posted a picture of a reverse "Uno" card on X, which had 56,000 likes at last check.

More follows …

• Tyson Garvin waited nearly 5 years to get his Cybertruck.
• He told BI that he knew he wanted to polish it the moment he ordered the truck.
• Garvin argued that polishing the truck makes vehicle maintenance much easier.

A Cybertruck owner had his stainless steel truck polished to a mirrored finish, which he claims solved the vehicle's oft-reported dust and fingerprint issues.

Tyson Garvin, a boating enthusiast from Joplin, Missouri, knew he wanted to polish his Cybertruck from the moment he pre-ordered it nearly five years ago.

"When we ordered it on Tesla's announcement day, I knew I was going to polish it that day," Garvin told Business Insider in an interview.

Finally, after years of patiently waiting, Garvin got his truck in April. But, after seeing it in person, he told BI there was much left to be desired.

"I didn't like it when I first got it," he said. "It was actually very dirty when I picked it up. It was a very bad delivery experience. And just the look of it — the dull stainless steel isn't evenly brushed."

That's when Garvin tapped Brylee Waits over in Neosho, Missouri, just south of Joplin.

Waits began a polishing business about three years ago. He named his company after what his former coworker used to refer to him as at his old job: The Polishing Guy.

"It just kind of grew from there," Waits told BI. "It's something that I could pass down to my kids and we could live a lifestyle where I don't have to struggle everyday."

Waits's business mainly specializes in semi-trucks — not stainless steel EVs.

But Waits said he hates saying no, so when Garvin approached him in early May at a local lifted-truck show requesting to chrome out his Cybertruck, The Polishing Guy took the challenge.

"I wouldn't say it was the hardest project," Waits said. "I guess it was a tough project just because it's never been done."

Overall, Waits estimated that the job took about a week and 120 man-hours with three other employees.

Garvin told BI that the outcome was a vast improvement to his truck — not just aesthetically but also practically.

"It doesn't have all the porous stainless steel that holds all the oil from your fingerprints," he said, adding that the bugs and dirt also make the truck hard to clean.

But with the polishing job, Garvin said the vehicle is much easier to maintain.

"The more you clean it, the shinier it gets," Garvin claimed.

A Tesla spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment sent over the weekend.

After Garvin shared the finished product on social media on May 27, Waits told BI that he received more than 60 inquiries about Cybertruck polishing jobs. He now has four trucks waiting to be polished.

A disco ball on wheels

Some skeptical commenters wondered if the mirror-finished would pose a road hazard. So far, Garvin said he hasn't run into any issues.

One of his concerns was if the headlights from a car behind him would reflect off the truck's tailgate while driving at night, giving the appearance of another car facing the driver.

Garvin told BI that, thankfully, the Cybertruck's tailgate slightly faces downward toward the road. When his wife followed him while driving, Garvin said that all she could see was the reflection of the ground.

"There's been a lot of talk on the internet from people saying whether someone could polish the Cybertruck or not," Garvin said. "Most people said you couldn't because of certain kinds of stainless steel used in the manufacturing process, but none of that mattered."

"They just didn't know any better," he said.

• Front-line Ukrainian units getting new troops told the Post they have a massive training problem.
• They said commanders have to re-teach soldiers on the front basic skills like firing their weapons.
• Some said Ukrainian training centers also don't have bullets and grenades for new recruits.

Ukrainian soldiers say their reinforcements are arriving on the front lines without fundamental skills such as assembling rifles and firing their weapons, The Washington Post reported.

The outlet spoke to commanders and newly deployed troops on the front, who said their units must re-train soldiers being sent from the rear.

The report, published Sunday, underscores concerns that have been voiced for months by Ukrainian units, who say they're running out of experienced troops as the war drags on.

As Ukraine rotates men from rear posts to relieve its front-line fighters, some fresh arrivals aren't meeting their commanders' basic requirements, per the Post. Notably, these aren't even the newly conscripted men Kyiv has been aggressively drafting in the last few months.

One officer of the 93rd Mechanized Brigade, identified by his call sign Schmidt, told the Post that some of his new men didn't know how to assemble or disassemble their rifles.

"We are just wasting a lot of time here on basic training," said Schmidt, per The Post. He added that he required new arrivals to train in their first week by firing about 1,500 bullets daily.

The 93rd Mechanized Brigade has seen some of the heaviest fighting in the war, including the battles for Bakhmut, Kharkiv, and Adviivka.

The Post reports that the new men in Schmidt's unit will likely be deployed near the devastated city of Chasiv Yar in Donetsk. One newly arrived soldier, identified by call sign Val of the 93rd Mechanized Brigade, told the outlet he was assigned to the front line with a day's notice.

Another soldier from the 42nd Mechanized Brigade in Kharkiv told the outlet that "everything is learned on the spot."

As for new recruits, Ukraine's training centers are barely equipped to provide soldiers with basic training, per the Post.

One instructor told the outlet that some facilities don't have enough Soviet-caliber bullets and only allow trainees to shoot about 20 rounds before training ends. The officer was not named because he did not have the authority to speak about his tenure at the facility.

"There are no grenades for throwing in training centers, and there are no grenade launcher rounds in the training center," he told the Post.

"We don't have a proper training system in place," he added.

Ukraine's Ministry of Defense press team did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent outside regular business hours by Business Insider.

Why the world cares about Ukraine's training

The West has been highly concerned about training for Ukraine's troops. Kyiv recently started receiving a stalled tranche of US military equipment and weaponry, but dwindling manpower is undermining that.

As Ukraine desperately tries to shore up the gaps in its military, member states of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization — such as the Baltic States and France — have hinted at plans to officially deploy military trainers in Ukraine to prepare the new waves of troops.

Russia and pro-Kremlin pundits have blasted such a move as an escalation by NATO that would cross a red line. Meanwhile, Moscow's economy is on a war footing, recruiting new troops rapidly and putting its defense manufacturing industry into overdrive.

Its ability to resupply the battlefield with troops and equipment has led some analysts to believe it can withstand heavy losses for years.

Meanwhile, Ukraine is struggling to both find and train new men to keep up with Russia, especially with its rear vulnerable to long-range Russian strikes.

Without safe areas to conduct training, Kyiv may have little choice but to send personnel to NATO states — even more so when it comes to Ukrainian operators learning how to use new Western-supplied equipment.

"There is a difficult tradeoff to make between pulling experienced soldiers from the frontline to train new personnel or accepting bottlenecks in training the new personnel," the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, wrote on Sunday.

The ISW added that the overall quality of Ukraine's frontline troops will probably decrease as experienced fighters rotate out, but the newer soldiers will likely learn fast alongside veterans.

It also noted that the Post's report of Ukrainian commanders training their troops on the frontline shows a difference in emphasis between Kyiv and Moscow's forces, citing how Russian commanders were widely reported to send their poorly trained men as cannon fodder.

• Stormy Daniels says Melania should leave former president Donald Trump.
• Trump was found guilty of all 34 felony counts related to a hush-money payment to Daniels.
• Daniels said Trump should go to prison or become a "volunteer punching bag at a women's shelter."

Melania Trump should leave Donald Trump, said Stormy Daniels, breaking the media silence she had held since Trump was convicted on Thursday.

"I don't know what their agreement may or may not be, but Melania needs to leave him. Not because of what he did with me or other women but because he is a convicted felon," the adult film star said in an interview with The Mirror published over the weekend.

On Thursday, the former president was found guilty on 34 counts of falsifying business records related to a hush-money payment made to Daniels, who says she had a sexual encounter with Trump in 2006.

Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, didn't mince her words about Trump in the interview.

"It's been proven he is abusive, he was found liable for sexual assault and tax fraud and is now a criminal," Daniels told The Mirror. "He's neither Teflon Don nor Teflon Con anymore."

Representatives for Trump didn't immediately respond to a request for comment from BI sent outside regular business hours.

While Trump has appeared defiant in the face of his growing legal problems, staffers say he is often afraid of Melania's reactions to them.

When Trump's infamous "Access Hollywood" tape was released in 2016, he took two hours before finally deciding to see her, per an excerpt from The Washington Post reporter Mary Jordan's book on Melania, "The Art of Her Deal: The Untold Story of Melania Trump."

In November 2022, Trump's former aide Kellyanne Conway said in a testimony to the House panel investigating the Capitol riot that Trump only fears Melania.

"He reserves — he listens to many of us, but he reserves fear for one person, Melania Trump," Conway said.

The former president told Fox News' "Fox & Friends" in a pre-taped interview that aired Sunday that the Manhattan trial had taken a toll on Melania.

"She's fine, but I think it's very hard for her. I mean, she's fine, but she has to read all this crap," Trump said.

Thursday's conviction makes Trump the first former American president to become a felon.

Trump could face a maximum sentence of up to four years in prison, though legal experts say he is unlikely to spend any time behind bars.

"I think he should be sentenced to jail and some community service working for the less fortunate, or being the volunteer punching bag at a women's shelter," Daniels told The Mirror.

Trump's recent conviction doesn't seem to have dampened his appeal to his supporters, who continue to view him as the GOP's best shot at retaking the White House in November.

In fact, the Trump campaign's fundraising page crashed less than an hour after he was convicted on Thursday. The page was restored about half an hour later.

"The American people see through Crooked Joe Biden's rigged show trial. So many Americans were moved to donate to President Trump's campaign that the WinRed pages went down," Trump's campaign team said in a post on X.

• Elon Musk and Jamie Dimon may be mending their nearly decade-long feud.
• Their strained relationship dates back to 2016, when JPM walked away from underwriting Tesla leases.
• Musk and Dimon recently talked on stage together at a JPMorgan summit.

Elon Musk and Jamie Dimon seem to be putting a nearly ten-year feud behind them.

The Tesla and JPMorgan CEOs have been throwing remarks — and lawsuits — at one another since 2016. But their relationship has been better since March, people familiar with the duo told The Wall Street Journal.

In March, Musk attended a JPMorgan technology summit in Big Sky, Montana, and the two executives spoke for an hour on stage about artificial intelligence and politics, the Journal reported. Musk also visited Dimon's suite at the resort and stayed there for over an hour. 

Following the event, Dimon decided his bank could try to go back to doing business with Musk, people familiar with the event said. A patch-up would be a win-win: Musk would get access to funding and advisory from the biggest bank in the US, and JPMorgan would have a chance to work with the serial entrepreneur's many businesses.

The relationship first turned sour in 2016 when the investment bank walked away from underwriting leases for Tesla's cars. Its bankers didn't know how to value the lifespan of the electric vehicle's batteries. That made Musk mad. He called the bank's head of consumer banking, cursed, and threatened to pull Tesla's business. Dimon called back and said that his bank would not be bullied, the Journal reported.

From then, Musk really did take his business elsewhere. He has relied more on Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, which were already Tesla's primary advisors. Goldman helped take the carmaker public in 2010 and was Musk's first choice when he attempted to make the company private again in 2018. According to financial data company Dealogic, Goldman has been paid nearly $90 million in fees from Tesla and SpaceX, another Musk venture, since 2010.

To make matters worse, JPMorgan sued Tesla and Musk over $162 million in 2021. The bank said Tesla "flagrantly" breached a 2014 contract the two companies signed relating to warrants sold to the bank. JPMorgan said Musk's tweet talking about taking the company private messed up the market. Tesla countersued, saying the bank was angry because it was left out of Musk's business and JPM executives had "animus" toward their boss.

In November, Dimon spoke about the lawsuit at a New York Times conference and said: "We think we're owed money for something and they say no, and it's in court and we'll win."

Both lawsuits are ongoing.

• Gaurav Singh founded a fund to buy software companies after his Harvard MBA.
• He shifted to search funds after struggling to gain traction with startups.
• Singh thought the search fund offered a path to leadership and flexibility.

During his MBA at Harvard Business School, Gaurav Singh pursued a tennis coaching app that didn't gain much traction with venture capitalists.

The app ultimately failed, and after graduation, he worked for a year and a half at an artificial intelligence startup in Toronto before exploring other avenues. He landed on an option that's becoming increasingly popular with top MBAs and entrepreneurs: launching his own search fund.

In February, Singh, 31, founded Guddi Growth. The Toronto-based search fund focuses on buying software-as-a-service companies with annual recurring revenue of at least $5 million.

Lower salary — but a big potential payday

A search fund founder like Singh raises money from investors to buy and operate a privately held business, like manufacturing, home improvement, and transportation companies.

Investors put $2.3 billion in search funds between 1986 and 2021, according to a 2022 report from the Stanford Graduate School of Business — a small sliver of the money that's gone to private equity firms. They have generated about $9.8 billion for investors and $2.4 billion for entrepreneurs, per Stanford.

And they're becoming an increasingly popular career choice: Until 2013, fewer than 10 funds were launched per year, on average, according to Stanford's report. But by 2020, 66 such funds hit the market. A third of "searchers," as Stanford termed the fund founders, took a recent business school class about entrepreneurship through acquisition.

In some ways, search funds are like a mini version of private equity: They target small companies, often with a handful of employees that serve regional markets, and can own several businesses. Investors typically mentor the searcher in their day-to-day operations.

Singh said he raised $600,000 from investors for the next two years — an amount he can spend at his discretion to pay his salary, business travel, and company expenses. That's above the median of $425,000 per person raised in Stanford's survey of searchers in 2021.

His fund is backed by a dozen investors, including search fund-specific investors and private equity firms he pitched. He's in talks to buy two companies.

Exit strategies can include selling the revamped company to a bigger private equity firm, going public, or buying out the initial investors and continuing to run the business.

For Singh, running a search fund means making less money in the short-term than his HBS classmates who work in consulting or private equity.

"Why you do this job is that when you make a sale, you probably get $5 million at the end of it," he said about selling one of his acquisitions down the line.

Here are three reasons why he decided on a search fund:

Shift in the search fund business

Search funds stereotypically pick up small HVAC companies in the Midwest, not tech businesses.

"Historically, tech people have stayed away from search funds because it's not exciting to them," he said. "In the last couple of years, people have started to love software within the search fund space because it makes a lot of money for everyone."

There is "massive opportunity" to find legacy software businesses that could benefit from a new or more efficient business model, he said. These could be projects that convert on-premise software companies to cloud companies or projects that change one-time software purchases to yearly subscriptions.

Generational transfer opportunities

Many small companies do not have succession plans and may fold if they are not acquired, giving search funds a good pitch for buying them, Singh said.

"Baby boomers are retiring," he said. "They have had profitable companies with long-term sticky customer bases, and these customer bases are not going to go away."

Singh said he is particularly excited about companies that could benefit from AI overhauls by automating sales and marketing or widening customer bases without increasing the number of employees.

Driver's seat

Search funds are also an opportunity for Singh to work for himself. If he'd started in VC or PE, he wouldn't get as much hands-on expertise or immediate leadership experience.

"For me, it was the fastest way to get into the driver's seat," he said.

He can work from anywhere in the world, which gives him flexibility to spend time with his friends and family, including his toddler daughter.

"As an entrepreneur, you work even harder, but how you work and where you work from is totally different," he said.

Singh said he knew of about 20 MBAs from his Harvard cohort who started search funds, out of about 800 in his class.

• Chinese firms are expanding overseas due to slowing domestic growth and market saturation.
• The growth was fuelled by mergers and acquisitions in Belt and Road partner countries that surged 32%.
• Chinese companies now favor greenfield deals over mergers and acquisitions.

As China's economy struggles to recover from the pandemic, Chinese companies are looking for new growth opportunities — and many are finding them overseas.

Chinese companies like social media giant TikTok and IT giant Lenovo are already globally competitive behemoths with compelling products.

Others are now following in their footsteps. They include electric vehicle-makers BYD and Chery, as well as consumer brands like Luckin Coffee. Even behemoths like Alibaba are looking outside China for opportunities as growth slows at home.

"The current economic climate, characterized by increasing competition and market saturation within China, incentivizes companies to explore and establish a presence in international markets," Chris Pereira, the founder and CEO of New York-based business consulting group iMpact — which helps Chinese companies go international — told Business Insider.

China's outward investment surged in Belt and Road partner countries

China's outward-bound investment increased nearly 1% from 2022 to 2023, hitting nearly $150 billion in 2023, according to a report professional services giant EY published in February.

While the 1% total increase is not a big jump, the increase in investment was pronounced in Belt and Road partner countries, where China's non-financial outbound direct investments rose 22.6%. Asia remained the top destination for mergers and acquisitions by Chinese enterprises for the fifth straight year, per EY.

The top three sectors Chinese companies invested in were technology, media, and telecom; advanced manufacturing and mobility, which includes electric vehicles; and healthcare and life sciences. These three sectors account for 53% of total investments by Chinese companies, per EY.

Admittedly, it's not a new move for Chinese companies to invest outside of China. But what is new is their strategy. In the 2010s, Chinese companies were known for buying up high-profile assets. That includes the storied Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York City, which was sold to a Chinese insurer in 2014, and ChemChina's takeover of Swiss agrochemical giant Syngenta in 2016.

That's not the case anymore.

Splurging on greenfield deals

Instead of M&A deals, Chinese companies now prefer to do greenfield deals — where they set up subsidiaries in foreign markets and operate the business from the ground up, according to fDi Intelligence, an investment publication.

This means Chinese companies will set up facilities overseas under their own brand or subsidiaries. This strategy works particularly well in industries in China that already have an edge, such as electric vehicles and EV batteries, per fDi Intelligence.

It's also in line with Beijing's "Made in China 2025" industrial policy that aims to make China's manufacturing capabilities competitive internationally.

The strategy shift is partly due to heightened geopolitical tensions following the tightening of foreign direct investment screening criteria by the US, UK, and EU governments to safeguard critical and strategic industries.

In 2022, the German government blocked Chinese companies from taking stakes in two German chip companies, citing national security concerns and concerns over technology transfer.

So, even as outbound investments rise, Chinese cross-border M&A transactions slumped to $17.3 billion in 2022. That was after years of expansion, which saw investment more than triple from $54.4 billion in 2010 to nearly $201 billion in 2016, per fDi Intelligence's analysis.

The US is not getting much love

Another difference in China's overseas investment strategy lies in geography.

Less than a decade ago, China was one of the top five investors in the US.

Today, Chinese firms are skipping the US in favor of markets in Southeast Asia, Europe, and Africa, said Pereira.

"These regions offer high growth potential, favorable trade agreements, and often, a more welcoming regulatory environment," he said.

China's annual investment in America dropped from $46 billion in 2016 to less than $5 billion in 2022, the Rhodium Group wrote in a report in September.

China has become a "second-tier player" in the US investment landscape, having been surpassed by countries such as Qatar, Spain, and Norway, the research firm added.

Pereira said interest has fallen due to increased trade tensions, stricter regulatory scrutiny, and geopolitical factors.

But even in today's complex geopolitical environment, Chinese companies are expected to continue venturing away from home, per EY.

"Fueled by the strong drive for development among enterprises, it is anticipated that 'going global' will continue to be a key growth strategy for many Chinese companies," Loletta Chow, the global leader of EY China Overseas Investment Network, said in the February report.

• Paul Reubens bought his Los Feliz home for $415,000 with earnings from "Pee-wee's Big Adventure."
• Now, a year after his death from cancer, the estate has been listed for sale at $4.995 million.
• Built in 1957, the midcentury modern home features sweeping views of LA and the Hollywood Hills.

You may not want to get mixed up with a guy like him, but the iconic loner and comedic actor Paul Reubens had great taste.

In 1985, Reubens purchased his estate in California's Hollywood Hills for $415,000 using earnings from his role as the titular character in "Pee-wee's Big Adventure," his personal assistant and trustee, Allison Berry, told The Wall Street Journal.

Now, a year after his death from cancer, his Los Feliz home has hit the market with a listing price of $4.995 million. The property features stunning views, whimsical wallpaper, a custom catio Reubens built for his feline friends, and a tribute to the role that made him a household name.

Take a look inside.

A 'trophy property in the making.'

Nestled at the end of a private road in "The Oaks" neighborhood of Los Feliz, real-estate agent Juliette Hohnen of Douglas Elliman calls the listing "a trophy property in the making."

Built in 1957, the property features timeless architecture and vintage wallpaper throughout.

On the market for the first time in almost 40 years, the 1.4-acre lot offers 360-degree views of Los Angeles and the surrounding canyons, including Griffith Park Observatory and the Hollywood sign.

"It was kismet for him because he loved the '50s," Berry told The Journal.

The den includes a wet bar and fireplace.

The home is a classic one-story mid-century ranch with three bedrooms and three bathrooms. It features sliding doors that open to the patio with pool and spa and a cozy den with a built-in wet bar and fireplace.

With panoramic views throughout, the kitchen overlooks the nearby hills.

The spacious kitchen, complete with vintage wallpaper, has a built-in breakfast nook and laundry room.

The primary bedroom suite opens into a custom-built cat patio.

The primary suite features a dressing area with a built-in vanity, a sitting room, and a bathroom that opens to an enclosed cat patio or "catio" Reubens built for his feline friends.

Reubens' catio was specially designed to protect his cats from wildlife prowling in the Hollywood Hills.

Berry told The Journal Reubens created the catio to protect his cat, Koko, from wildlife in the area and decorated the walls with shells from his hometown of Sarasota, Florida.

Reubens later adopted three more cats, Sam, Hugo, and Henry, who for years enjoyed climbing the jungle gym, Berry told the outlet.

The home features vintage wallpaper Reubens collected.

Two guest bedrooms share a Jack-and-Jill bathroom, styled with timeless 1950s-era features.

"For him, it was all about restoring that house and keeping that house very much true to the original concept," Berry told The Journal. "And so to be able to put in this vintage wallpaper that he had saved, he just loved that."

Reubens regularly entertained at the property, hosting parties for famous friends.

Each guest room features exceptional views of the surrounding hills. Reubens regularly hosted parties and dinners for his friends, including "Goodfellas" actress Debi Mazar and "Scream" actor David Arquette.

Reubens' and Mazar's signed handprints remain embedded in the concrete near the pool and hot tub outside, Berry told The Journal.

Outside, amid Reubens' precious garden, sits an apparent tribute to Pee-wee Herman.

Reubens planted a cactus garden on the property, as well as guava and persimmon trees, Berry told The Journal. The lot offers "park-like grounds," according to Hohnen," featuring walking trails, abundant wildlife, and an apparent tribute to Pee-wee's iconic red Schwinn DX cruiser.