Douglas Elliman is dropping corporate jet perks from the rolls.
The firm notified its former parent company, Vector Group, that it planned to terminate an agreement allowing it to lease aircraft owned by Vector on a per-flight basis, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Elliman filed the change with the SEC on Tuesday, the same day it announced the sudden retirement of CEO and chairman Howard Lorber after two decades leading the company. The firm declined to comment on the reason for Lorber’s abrupt departure. Elliman tapped Michael Liebowitz, a director on the board since the firm spun off from Vector in 2021, as his successor.
Lorber is also the president and CEO of Vector Group, which he sold to Japanese tobacco company JT Group in August for $2.4 billion.
The move is the latest cost-cutting measure at the firm, which has been on a years-long mission to reduce its expenses as it stacked up quarterly losses. But the campaign didn’t previously touch the pay and bonus packages of the firm’s top executives, which for Lorber, included $200,000 in private jet usage.
Canceling the lease agreement will save the firm roughly $2 million a year, according to previous financial reports. Elliman has spent more than $6 million to use Vector’s jets since 2022.
“As Douglas Elliman moves forward with an aggressive and strategic growth plan, leadership decided to allocate resources towards more vital opportunities enhancing agent services and shareholder value,” a spokesperson for the firm wrote in a statement.
The aircraft agreement drew criticism from a shareholder this summer. In a letter to his fellow shareholders, investor Brad Tirpak called for an end to jet usage at the company, along with an end to Lorber’s reign as chairman.
“It is time for a complete separation from Vector,” Tirpak wrote in the letter. He noted that the firm pays $4.2 million a year to its former parent company for various services, which he pushed the company to bring in-house.
The firm’s other cost cuts have included laying off 100 employees last year, as well as pulling out of expensive corporate sponsorships and leases for office space. Elliman last year ended its nine-year stint as a sponsorship partner with Art Basel in Miami. It also did not renew a Manhattan office lease for its property management division.
Elliman has also ended a multi-year sponsorship deal with Madison Square Garden, which it rolled out as part of a major marketing push in 2016 while it was still under the Vector Group umbrella. The deal, which sources at the time estimated at several million dollars a year, came with branding rights for a row of courtside seats, a VIP lounge and a spot on the Knicks’ website.
But the firm is still a major sponsor at the Hampton Classic Horse Show, as it has been for nearly 30 years. Its spread this summer included four ringside tables, pegged at $35,000 each, and it backed a $70,000 Grand Prix qualifier.
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Residential
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Howard Lorber is retiring from Douglas Elliman