After the sale of one of his two East Hampton estates, Ron Perelman may be $84.5 million richer, but he still has a long way to go before freeing himself from a financial down spiral.
The chairman and chief executive of MacAndrews & Forbes, which oversees cosmetic giant Revlon, sold his 11,425-square-foot waterfront home at 153 Lily Pond Lane on January 6 to an unnamed buyer, listed as 153 LPL LLC, according to the Real Estate Report Inc. According to reports, Perelman paid just $3.75 million in 1994 for the circa 1971 home and 9.25-acre property — which includes 385 feet of ocean frontage and was listed for $115 million last summer with Harald Grant of Sotheby’s International Realty.
Already poised to be one of the biggest sales of 2022, it comes as Perelman parts ways with a ton of his assets — a flurry of jets, yachts, stock and art. Last July alone, he sold off his 70 percent stake in Humvee maker AM General and auctioned paintings by Joan Miro and Henri Matisse for a combined $39 million. In the fall, he placed his 280-foot superyacht on the market for $106 million. He even sold The Independent newspaper, which he acquired in 2017.
It appears that the 79-year-old businessman isn’t done yet. Rumors still run amok that Perelman is looking to offload The Creeks, his Georgica Pond estate, but it remains nothing more than a “whisper listing” that his PR team denies.
In early January, a story in The New York Times chronicled the rise and fall of the billionaire — pointing to the $3 billion in loans Revlon racked up in order to buy Elizabeth Arden in 2016 for just over $1 billion, as well as debt from other businesses, like Vericast, that comprise his small kingdom.
But trouble struck when Perelman — who secured those loans with his personal properties, toys and art — watched Revlon’s share price plummet from $24 to $5 during the pandemic. The banks closed in, the article explains, and he began “divesting.”
The downsizing comes as Perelman’s net worth has collapsed to $4.55 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, compared to nearly $20 billion in 2018.
Staff Writer on Feb 1, 2022