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Subject:
To: Melanie Spinella <[REDACTED]>
Leon,
Yesterday , I again spent hours upon hours of my time with your office. ,( speak to brad to get flavor) and you and i will discuss the results in gory gruesome detail on Friday. it mirrored many other weeks spent doing the things that I don;t have the time to do.
In order to keep things in perspective, maybe reviewing an analogy I have used before with you, might be helpful. You and your family are a 6 billion dollar corp. with an income between 250 -500 million dollars per year. It contains a few operating biz's , a large wide array of existing investments, in various categories , a desire to enter into others. A panoply of loans, notes. purchases, wide range of all types of taxes. , planes. boats homes. . trusts ,grats. a crazy number of bank accts. ( with no oversight ) . law firms, acct firms, 800 page tax returns, foreign firms. art consultants. construction consultants bill payers, home mgmt.,vast multitude of llc's , including foreign, and with all that you only have a combined overhead of less that 3 million dollars.
I have previously sent you the very same note that i have enclosed again below ,this time with highlights . I wrote it to you over a year ago. As my acute disability ( selective memory) seems to have been raised as one of your concerns , as a rule I try to memorialize things in writing in an attempt to lay out issues that I fear may later turn out to be a problem. ie what i would and wouldn't do , - my responsibilities. etc and those things that are not. below you will find details of things that I thought needed to be done, so that you wouldn't find yourself in the very place where you currently find yourself. however ,you chose to defer many of my suggestions- see below -,until only weeks ago. ! you chose to defer the jpm acct. the art partnership on and on - into this year. and though the 60- 50 40 timber emails all carried with it a clear warning that you needed to do something re personnel if it were to stabilize,- you chose to wait.

ONE YEAR AGO
Feb 17 2014 i wrote :
With regard the more pressing issue I am uncertain of just how to proceed. I am torn, as my very strong inclination is not to be involved at all . It is extremely time consuming, delicate, fraught with many pitfall many that will make you very upset and a major pain in the ass. I wrote you months ago that the quality of the people involved need to be upgraded. ( lucky for me these last issues arose way before the beginning of my involvement ) I am also aware however of my overarching friendship obligations of ok, -given all the complexities who else can do it? problem.
Your family office needs a daddy. children with good intentions are running around , sniping , nitpicking with little direction. As a stopgap measure I am suggesting , we put in Larry Delson to take charge Everyone would report to him. Eileen included. He would however work for me. this is not, by a long shot my first choice as I prefer only being responsible and standing behind my own personal work ( ie the word DONE will no longer be transmitted to reflect status stated by others )
With no commitment on my part whatsoever, to do it. So far as I have failed in my attempt in trying to think through the problem creatively . My organizations handling of the more complex issues I believe you might find very costly, very ! ( however many structures available some risk sharing, maybe risk caps ,etc ) but would require my teams doing the work , not yours. Ada should be only a trust, grat administrator. not sure what role you prefer for Eileen as you hired her initially to oversee investments. whether Rich your controller stays or not, is not urgent. having Tom report to a new person,- is. coordination with Suydam Kathy Gregory, I would suggest limiting to one person. The increasing public profile needs to be taken into consideration.

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