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With the release of theEpstein filesseven months behind us, many of the leads into the convicted sex offenders’s connections to the rich and powerful have gone cold — except for those involvingLeon Black. The billionaire co-founder of the private-equity giant Apollo Global Management is being hounded by Congress over his suspiciously generous $158 million payment to Jeffrey Epstein for tax purposes. And the 75-year-old is fighting back. Last week, Black ignored a House Oversight subpoena and filed a lawsuit in federal courtclaiming the subpoenahas “no legitimate connection” to the committee’s legislative goals.
This week, banker turned financial journalist William D. Cohan has a new book on Black calledMoney to Burn, tracing his rise from the ashes of Drexel Burnham Lambert to his fall after Epstein’s death. It is an enormous study of a major figure on Wall Street that goes beyond recent headlines; the Epstein saga is first treated on page 426. Cohan tracks the ways that Black’s career defined the rise of private equity in America and how he was defined by the men in his life ranging from complicated to nefarious:his father, Michael Milken, and Epstein. The day after Black sued the House, I spoke with Cohan about Black’s Epstein ties, his designs to rehab his image thanks to his world-class art collection, and whether or not a billionaire who has never been charged with a crime can ever be held accountable.
In the book, discussing the saga of Apollo’s Twinkies acquisition, Leon Black says, “Normally I don’t talk to reporters.” So why did he sit for this book?That’s a question my wife always wants to know the answer to. I started by interviewing Marc Rowan, who I’ve known for 30 years since I was a banker. Next thing, I got a call from Leon saying, “Don’t you want to interview me?” The answer was, “Yes, of course.” I was going to seek him out, but he beat me to the punch. I don’t know whether it was the combination of things I’ve written over the years and my own nearly 20-years experience on Wall Street. That makes it seem like,Okay, I’m a guy who at least understands the industry and the players and can put it in perspective.I think he felt like this was his opportunity to say his piece. And he was on the record throughout. So I give him credit for that.
You wrote that you were “incredulous that he would have such a loosey-goosey fee arrangement with Epstein.” Do you think that Epstein is just the Michael Jordan of tax-structuring advice?When theDechert reportcame out, I wrote apieceinVanity Fairabout how I just didn’t believe that he could pay $158 million for tax and estate advice that you could get for $5 million from Paul, Weiss. We talked about how I was incredulous. I still find it all a little bit hard to believe, but I never really found anything to refute it — and neither has anybody else.
Jeffrey Epstein was some sort of Svengali who managed to surround himself, or take advantage of, or find the weakness of any number of very powerful people. Leon told me that Epstein introduced him to Bill Gates, who came to his office and spoke about philanthropy for two hours. He said, “Look, no one else introduced me to Bill Gates. This guy, Jeffrey Epstein, for whatever reason, is able to introduce me to Bill Gates. I wanted to talk to him about philanthropy and other things.” Epstein just seemed to have this way. Another time we were having sandwiches from some deli in his office at Black’s family office Elysium, and he went over to the pocket of his jacket, which was over a chair, and he pulled out this little scrap of paper with all the names of the famous people, big-name people, who were in Jeffrey Epstein’s orbit. He is like, “Hey, I’m not alone here. I didn’t know anything about this,” or so he claimed.
Epstein is not alive, so I can’t really run it by him. Ghislaine ain’t talking. So we have one side of the story that I vetted as best as I could, sort of ratified by the Dechert report and ratified by his attorneys, and really hasn’t been questioned by the IRS. I know Ron Wyden is questioning it, but nothing’s really come out of that except a lot of smoke because Leon is obviously an easy target.
You quote a close friend to Black that he should be “thankful” for the Epstein stuff because if it hadn’t happened, he’d be still running Apollo. Do you think he got out at the right time?He had been trying to get Marc Rowan to agree to be his successor for a few years. As 2020 rolled around and there were beginning to be revelations that Leon’s involvement with Epstein was beyond what anybody had thought, it was clear that Leon stepped up his efforts, especially since Mark was the creator of [Apollo’s annuity provider] Athene, which was now going to be a bigger part of Apollo. They were going to buy it back and the business was moving away from private equity and into private credit.
I think he’s been very happy with Marc’s stewardship. He’s obviously made a lot of money on what is now 85 million shares. He also runs Elysium. He has a lot of outside interests, including his incredible art collection. So that person who said that about Leon is absolutely right. He didn’t really like running the firm to begin with. It was now a public company with a much different profile than it used to be. Marc was the king of private credit. He’s lucky that Marc was willing to do it, to be honest. It allows Leon to go on his jet and fly around wherever he wants, occasionally having to go to Congress.
When you have $14 billion and youownThe Scream, is there such a thing as public accountability or have you been able to transcend concepts like this?This question transcends Leon Black. Definitely. If you look at the Bloomberg Billionaires list, Leon’s far down that list. Tom Wolfe inThe Bonfire of the Vanitiestalked about “insulate, insulate, insulate.” We’ve created a class of people in this country who can insulate on steroids now. They can buy whatever they want. They can be wherever they want. They have unlimited resources for legal defense and legal obstruction. Not everybody in this group needs to be held accountable for bad actions, but those that do seem to elide any accountability on a regular basis. And the rest of us look at that and say, “How can that be?” Or then they’re pardoned.
The insulation seems particularly strong in the art world. It’s hard to imagine Black ever getting removed from the MoMA board position, though he did step down as chair. He has the paintings they want.By the way, he has been generous with lending his artworks because he believes they should be seen as long as they’re kept safe. He’s lent artworks to MoMA; he’s donated$40 million. He justbought the Woolworth mansionon 80th Street. He told me he plans to turn that into his version of the Neue Galerie, although it requires renovation and I don’t know what he’s going to put in there. He also told me, in a wistful session, that he has more than a billion dollars in his private family foundation, which he would like to give away. He’s been very generous, but there are some organizations that don’t want his money or won’t take it because they feel like it’s tainted. I’m sure that’s frustrating for him, too.
We saw Black at aKnicks playoff game in Maywith super-dealer Larry Gagosian. He’s aregularat the U.S. Open. He’s atFrieze and Art Basel. Do you get the sense that he’s out and about in this world?I’ve run into him on Fifth Avenue. He’s out and about. I don’t think he really shies away.
I’ve had many people who I really respect and think would be quite knowledgeable about and plugged in who don’t know who Leon Black is. That’s part of the reason I wanted to write this story.
With this Woolworth situation, would that be a step toward a full rehabbing of his reputation?His mentor was Michael Milken at Drexel Burnham Lambert. For better or for worse, you could say that Milken has been pretty much 95 percent rehabilitated — including co-opting much of the media to go out to his institute every year and writing fawningly about it. Now Milken pled guilty [to securities violations] and got pardoned by Trump. He has given a lot of money to trying to cure cancer, so has Leon, by the way. He’s given a lot of money to melanoma research and has been on the cutting edge of that. But Leon hasn’t gone to jail. He hasn’t gone to prison. He hasn’t been convicted of anything. There’s a lot of innuendo around him, obviously, and remains so to this day, but he’s never been convicted of anything. And I think he would like a Milken-style rehabilitation, but he hasn’t gotten that yet in part because he can’t be pardoned for something he hasn’t done.
