This Opera Lover Is Singing Again

Of all the internet true believers, few suffered more publicly in the aftermath of the dot-com collapse than Alberto W. Vilar. Between the NASDAQ peak in early 2000 and its nadir in late 2002, capital managed by Vilar's Amerindo Investment Advisors Inc., one of the most aggressive investors in tech startups, dropped from $7.5 billion to less than $1 billion. Insult to injury: His name was stripped from the interior wall of the Metropolitan Opera House after he asked to delay payments on a $20 million pledge.

Well, Vilar is trying to make a comeback. The value of Amerindo's holdings in its private equity and mutual funds has climbed more than 200% from its trough, and now he's hoping that the anticipated initial public offering of Google Inc. fuels a runup in newly issued tech stocks -- boosting Amerindo. The courtly 63-year-old Cuban American clucks with anticipation. "One of these days we'll get a very big bounce," he predicts.