The New York Times
By Jodi Wilgoren
January 7th, 2005
One of the wealthiest and most philanthropic families in Chicago has settled an internal legal battle by handing siblings Liesel and Matthew Pritzker $900 million, the New York Times reports.
The agreement closes the books on a lawsuit filed by the siblings in which they accused their father, Robert Pritzker, of emptying their trust funds in his divorce from their mother in the mid-1990s; the siblings had each sought $1.1 billion, plus $5 billion in punitive damages. In exchange for dropping the suit, Liesel Pritzker, 20, an actress and student at Columbia University, and her brother Matthew, 22, each received $280 million and also gained control of trusts in their names worth $170 million each.
The resolution of the suit also clears the way for a separate legal agreement among eleven cousins to divide up the Pritzker clan’s $15 billion empire, which includes the Hyatt hotel chain, the sixty-plus companies in the Marmon Group, and a network of 2,500 trusts, many of which finance charitable activities.
The agreement could be the first step in the unraveling of a dynasty that was founded 124 years ago when Nicholas Pritzker emigrated from a Jewish ghetto near Kiev, taught himself English by reading newspapers, became a lawyer, and hung a shingle in the Loop.
Today, the Pritzker name is all over Chicago, with family members sitting on boards and funneling millions of dollars to universities, hospitals, and arts and cultural institutions.
SEE ALSO—
“Shattered Dynasty: Suzanna Andrews charts the destruction of a great American fortune…”Jay Pritzker quietly built a $15 billion empire of more than 200 companies, including Hyatt Hotels Corp., and a network of 1,000 family trusts. But one of the patriarch’s final deals before his 1999 death, designed to bind his heirs closer, unleashed a torrent of anger, greed, and betrayal, culminating last fall in a $6 billion lawsuit by his 19-year-old niece, Liesel.
Vanity Fair, May 2003
