Why shouldn't Leona Helmsley's greedy scumbag executors walk off with that cool $100M?

Leona and Trouble (the doggy kind, that is): Those canny executors succeeded in wangling the pooch's $12M bequest down to $2M, with the rest going to no-doubt-admirable charities.

by Ken

If your first response to the news is anything like mine, it will have something to do with the four scumbag executors (two of whom are grandsons of the legator) cashing in an unconscionable payday for their not quite seven years of servicing the $5.4B estate of the departed Queen of Mean, Leona Helmsley since her departure in August 2007. As James Fanelli writes in his DNAinfo New York report: "The executors — Helmsley's grandsons David and Walter Panzirer, her lawyer Sandor Frankel and her longtime friend John Codey — filed a petition in Manhattan Surrogate’s Court on Tuesday, asking a judge to approve their princely payday from the estate’s funds."

(A fifth executor -- Helmsley’s brother, Alvin Rosenthal -- resigned in 2010 and died in 2012. It surely goes without saying that his widow plans to sue for her, or rather his, cut for his years of service.)


SO WHAT DOES $100M BUY YOU FOR SEVEN
YEARS' WORTH OF EXECUTORS' SERVICES?

Give them their due, the Executorial Fab Four. At least in their telling, they've been busy little executorial beavers in the service of the Leona estate.

In the section that follows I've somewhat regrouped as well as reformatted the executors' claims. Also, there are links onsite.

• The executors say in their latest filing that overseeing the estate involved weekly all-day meetings in the first few years after Helmsley’s 2007 death.

They had to immerse themselves in her hotels’ operations and oversaw turning her penthouse apartment in the Park Lane Hotel into a rentable suite, according to the filing.

“The executors successfully administered an estate of extraordinary complexity and difficulty under historically challenging conditions and their services since the decedent’s death have bestowed tremendous benefit upon the estate,” the filing says.

Helmsley owned or held stakes in 84 properties spread across 17 states, including landmarked buildings, residential buildings and even CVS stores, according to the filing.

Her will instructed the executors to sell off her entire multi-billion-dollar portfolio, but she died just before the financial crisis hit in 2008. The timing posed a challenge to the executors as they tried to obtain the best price on properties, the filing says.

The executors say that while some properties are still in the process of being sold, they have had some success stories.

The filing says the executors got $722 million for Helmsley’s stake in the Empire State Building. The deal is expected to bring in an additional $175 million when the sale of the estate’s interests in connected properties is completed later this year, the filing says. The executors also tout the sale of the Park Lane Hotel for $660 million in 2013.

• They’ve doled out gargantuan sums to charities

• Their services also involved heading off bad press about Helmsley — especially from money-hungry disgruntled employees

“Due to the previous press coverage of the decedent, some employees apparently viewed the estate as a deep pocket which was an easy target for spurious claims,” the legal filing says.

The executors claim that some employees filed lawsuits against Helmsley after she died, while others made accusations that never made it to court.

The four confronted each case by “quietly investigating and resolving all claims on economically prudent terms, bearing in mind that the decedent’s reputation and history of prior claims increased the risks of actions by others,“ the filing says.

They claimed one employee even tried to extort them.

While the employee’s name is not revealed, the filing says the resolution of the claim in 2008 helped executors cut staff at Dunnellen Hall, Helmsley’s $35 million Greenwich, Connecticut, mansion..

• The executors also handled the investigation and firing of the Helmsley Hotel’s general manager for the unauthorized booking of a “notorious international leader,” the filing says

The New York Post reported in 2009 that hotel officials abruptly cancelled a banquet when they learned then Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was a keynote speaker.

• The executors also pat themselves on the back for negotiating a settlement with two of Helmsley’s grandchildren who were excluded from her will. The executors say they sidestepped costly legal challenges by inking a $6 million payout to the disinherited scions.

• The filing also crows about the executors’ service in handling the inheritance of Helmsley’s dog, Trouble. The will left the pooch $12 million, but a judge gave the executors approval to reduce the amount to $2 million. The rest went to charity.

ON REFLECTION, I HAD A COOLER REACTION: WHY
THE HECK NOT? IT'S SCUMBAG MONEY ANYWAY

After all, I don't think anyone's suggesting that the Fab Four mis-admininstered the estate, or trampled on the wishes of the legator. And if the $100M, even split four ways, sounds like, well, a lot, even forgetting that the two grandson-executors got $10M each as legatees in the will, and the now-deceased brother-executor $15M, well, still, it's not my money, is it? Or yours?

In fact, once that $5.4B fell into the clutches of Leona, it became what we might call scumbag money. What is the surrogate judge who rules on the executors' request going to do? Chop the $100M claim in half and give the rest to some deserving recipient?

I don't think so. I mean, anyone who reads the papers knows how many deserving claimants there are, for whom even a small share of that "surplus" $50M would be a godsend. But I don't see how the judge could manage to divert a chunk of it to, say, school-lunch programs. After all, we all know the old saying: Teach a hungry kid how to fish, and maybe he'll wind up owning a fleet of dolphin-killing fishing boats, but try to find a way to see that that hungry kid gets decent meals and you're creating yet another lazy, whining, entitled, do-nothing taker.

Whereas the Fab Four have been working their fingers to the bone these not-quite-seven years. It's not as if the estate didn't give anything to charity. Surely now these boys are entitled to their payday. After all, they're, not takers, they're guys . . . um, tell me again, what's the opposite of takers?

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