(no subject)

Leon,

I hate having to write this. However, I wanted you to understand the seriousness of your dysfunctional family office. I spent the last week reviewing it. The office has suffered from lack of control and clear direction. Eileen has been a nightmare for you. She hammered together the office in a willy-nilly fashion either trying to hire quality people or once hired giving no defined roles. She and Ada protecting what they see as their turf, errors upon errors upon errors. Millions of dollars unaccounted for. 500k again found in a drawer last week. In early Sept I notified you that Joslin was unable to deal with Ada and Eileen. I sent Delson in to referee. I again notified you in early Oct that she needed to go but needed them until Oct 15. I pointed out the risk of keeping the dynamic duo was their effect on Joslin. In Nov I sent you an email telling you I thought he could not take more of their interference. This week, in the first face-to-face I had with him since Dec, he could not respond to simple questions, spoke financial gibberish, had misleading answers, bad answers, wild elliptical statements. As you asked, I confronted Brad with this, and to my amazement, Brad said that his take was the same but this is how he found him in early Jan and thought it was just his normal behavior. In mid-Nov you suggested that your choice to run the office was Brad and he would replace Eileen. From mid-Dec he audited until early Jan, when he assumed your job that I'm told is only 75% of his time. He might be capable of running your office but I have yet to see any indication that that is true. On Thursday I handed the same spreadsheet that I had sent to Brad, to four financial execs. (only to mine with actual numbers), to a person each within minutes said this makes no sense. No sense whatsoever, bad numbers, bad categories, bad inputs, outputs numbers that don't add. If it was an MRI of Joslin I would say serious breakdown. I had him over to explain to my team what had happened, and then sent my do to speak to him and others at Elysium. I pointed out to you that Joslin could not make the first pass at hiring a finance person. I was right. He is a great tax person, period. No social skills, reporting skills, or management skills. It's a mess and a larger one than I thought. Sorry, I have begun to interview some CFOs and have put out more feelers. If you feel comfortable I think you should ask at Apollo for help. It is now too late to remove Eileen entirely as I had been requesting. I have not spoken to her in months. But during this crazy delay in doing so, she is now significantly more entrenched. A re-do is necessary. Top down.

You have repeatedly pointed out that you believe you have paid me what you consider a great deal of money. You are one of my best friends. To say you made a good deal would be an understatement. I have spent the majority of the last year restructuring your things. I had to cancel my Europe trips for the last six months of last year. I am down money, friends, and clients doing so. I take our friendship very seriously and feel not one iota of regret though I made a bad deal but lived up to it. And more, much more.

That being said, you will need to bring in a few people to start from the top down. Apollo review, coordination, bill pay, bookkeeping, legal reporting, filings, SEC gaming foreign, PFIC, FBAR, gift tax, use tax, corporate admin, investments, art, household personal, taxes, gifts, trusts, children, checks and balances, banking doc review, travel review, review of will given new info, JPM, Goldman, DB BAM, check writing, foundation decision, art consultants, boat, plane, construction, travel, insurance, IT, staff management. We will have to deal with Tom, Ada, Eileen, now Joslin.