Creditors of Sarah Ferguson‘s defunct Hartmoor LLC can’t be a happy bunch today.
Owed more than $1 million, the group is looking at getting about half that amount as lawyers sift through the debris looking for cash to pay out. “This was clearly a distressed company,” a source close to the Duchess told The Post. “And when the company failed it had significant debts.”
The Duchess of York set up Hartmoor three years ago to manage her US business interests, including her Weight Watchers spokesperson gig and income from her personal appearances. But a once-promising US business career turned sour and Hartmoor collapsed in January, shortly after the former royal lost her job as a diet pitchster.
But while creditors are looking at a pay-out of between 50 cents and 75 cents on the dollar, Fergie was announcing that she had just sold the movie rights to her series of kiddie books.
“A major US film company has just bought up rights to my series of children’s books,” the Duchess told the Daily Mail newspaper, adding: “I cannot tell you how exciting that is for me… America has been so good to me.”
For her US creditors — not so much.
The Duchess declined to name the US company that bought the rights to her books, however, and no US company has so far come forward to herald the apparent deal.
Hartmoor creditors are interested in the answer.
– James Doran
Lehman scribe
Breaking down the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers — one the most complex banks on Wall Street — is a lucrative gig.
Lawrence McDonald, the author of “A Colossal Failure of Common Sense: The Inside Story of the Collapse of Lehman Brothers,” is hauling in as much as $30,000 per appearance from companies, organizations and universities to speak about the lessons learned from the biggest bankruptcy in history.
Beginning just three weeks ago, McDonald, a former managing director at Lehman, has lined up more than six engagements on the lecture circuit over the next several weeks — sponsored by domestic firms such as Franklin Templeton as well as foreign organizations, which could translate into a tidy $180,000.
Not bad for a day’s work.
McDonald’s lectures focus on corporate governance, where he urges shaking up passive boards of directors and promotes accountability and dispensing with the government mentality of “too big to fail.”
– Mark DeCambre
Hey buddy, can you spare a dime?
It’s tough times for developer Kent Swig.
First, his cherished Sheffield57 condo-conversion project went to foreclosure auction.
Then, after a judge ruled that he has to pay back a $32.4 million personally guaranteed loan to Square Mile Structured Debt, a real-estate investment fund, Swig filed a court affidavit Sept 15 stating — or threatening — to file for personal bankruptcy.
Seems he has a liquidity problem — and can’t even turn to his family for help.
Swig’s father-in-law, Harry Macklowe, worth $2 billion as recently as 2003, is fighting through a cash squeeze of his own. The New York real estate legend spent more than $7 billion on seven buildings and got caught when the bottom fell out of the commercial real-estate sector.
The family’s issues, highlighted in the chart below, should make for interesting dinner conversation.
– Jennifer Gould Keil