Leon Black

2021 0129 - Vanity Fair - “What a Sad Tale of Sycophants”: Wall Street Isn’t Buying Leon Black’s Epstein Story, by William D. Cohan - [link] y
- Dechert’s report on the Apollo cofounder’s decades-long dealings with the late convicted sex offender, including payments of $158 million, is raising eyebrows—and more questions—on Wall Street. One lawyer dismissed it as a “whitewash.

Apollo Global Management - co-founder and former CEO of the private equity firm
- Leon Black, Chairman and CEO of Apollo Global Management - [VIDEO-YouTube]
- ~06:00 - Junk Bond Companies - Only Junk because they were young.
- ~7:45 - Credit Lyonnaise bought Executive Life Assets

2023 0724 - Letter - GOV (Ron Wyden (D-OR) to Leon Black - re: ... the Committee’s investigation into your financial dealings with Jeffrey Epstein - 16p
- The Committee is conducting several investigations into the means by which ultra-high net worth persons avoid or evade paying federal taxes, including gift taxes. These investigations will help inform legislation to address loopholes in the tax code. For example, the Committee has been investigating the growing use of Private Placement Life Insurance by the wealthiest Americans as a tax shelter to avoid paying billions of dollars in income, gift and estate taxes. The Committee’s investigations into offshore tax evasion schemes involving individuals with dual citizenship have also uncovered other challenges related to the enforcement of gift tax laws. For example, the Committee's investigation into Credit Suisse identified several situations where expatriating from the United States was part of a strategy to evade gift taxes while concealing offshore accounts from the IRS.
- The facts and circumstances surrounding your business arrangement with Epstein present a variety of novel issues as they relate to circumventing gift and estate tax laws. Due to the limited information you have provided the Committee, a significant number of open questions remain regarding the tax avoidance scheme you implemented with Epstein’s assistance,

Regarding Executive Life, it was obvious that the sale of assets lost value for the policyholders.
I think I remember reading that it was about $1.5 billion that was given up from the sale of assets quite quickly.
Garamendi was the Insurance Commissioner for the state of California; he was a novice, and he didn't really understand the insurance industry. He had worked for a bank. I met him once or twice.
- He just had a different outlook on what was going on than somebody who was inside the insurance industry.
- He also was a political animal, so I think he gave up a lot of value to policyholders by selling out so quickly, and he sold to Leon Black. He was the one who created a lot of stuff in the first place. He knew what the value of it was. Why would you sell it? It's like selling to the shark. You're going to get bitten. I think it was mishandled.

-- Keven Maloney, Vice President and Senior Analyst of Moody's Investors Service

1999 - SOA - Insurance Company Failures of the Early 1990s-Have We Learned Anything?, Society of Actuaries - 25p

National Financial Services was funded by Leon Black last year with $125 million.
- It hired a named figure to be CEO.
- Since it was funded, which was less than a year ago, it has made dozens of acquisitions. This is, clearly, a financial play. It is going to put these together and go public.
- One of the things it says to the producers, as I understand it, is when it buys them on Friday that you can walk into your office on Monday and nothing will change, and you'll drive the changes.
- It caters to the entrepreneurial independent broker. I think the counter-balancing issue is, how do you ultimately institutionalize these producers so that, when you go public, everybody is tied together in the value that somebody will pay you for that equity you created?

-- Robert D. Shapiro, consultant investment banker to the insurance industry since 1965

1999 - SOA - Industry Convergence—Bank Participation, Society of Actuaries - 18p