Feil family feuds over $7B empire

A feud has broken out within the ranks of the mighty Feil family, with the four heirs of late real estate mogul Louis Feil battling in court for control of his $7 billion-plus portfolio.

Jeffrey Feil was tapped by Louis to steer the organization, while ownership is split evenly between him and his three sisters, Marilyn Barry, Judith Jaffe, and Carole Feil. In papers filed in Nassau County Surrogate’s Court, the sisters accused their brother of depriving them of cash in order to engage in a takeover at a discount.

Feil has responded by saying that they receive plenty of money and that he is running the business in a manner suitable to his father’s memory, according to Court Papers Seen By The Wall Street Journal.

“The binding of the book became loose when my father died,” Jeffrey Feil told the newspaper, referring to his relationship with his siblings. “The pages fell out after my mother died.”

Neither he nor his sisters would comment to the Journal about the litigation.

“It would make my father sick if he knew what was happening to us,” Carole Feil said.

The Feil Organization is one of the city’s oldest family-owned real estate firms, and owns and operates more than 26 million square feet of residential, retail and commercial office space. Properties include the Fred F. French building, an office tower at 551 Fifth Avenue at 45th Street; 4 Park Avenue, a pre-war rental building at 34th Street; and 570 Lexington Avenue, a 450,000-square-foot office building at 51st Street. [WSJ]  – Hiten Samtani