Robert Lapidus is the president and chief investment officer of L&L Holdings, the company he co-founded with David Levinson in 2000. L&L owns numerous trophy properties, such as the 76-story Metropolitan Tower at 142 West 57th Street and 150 Fifth Avenue, a 200,000-square-foot office and retail building.

L&L is also developing a 650,000-square-foot office tower at 425 Park Avenue. The company paid $140 million in July to buy a 90 percent stake in the property from Lehman Brothers Holdings. An attorney by training, Lapidus attended the University of Pennsylvania and Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law.

In a 2013 interview with The Real Deal Lapidus explained how he got into the real estate business. "I worked for a law firm in New Jersey called Wolff & Samson. I represented a lot of people in the real estate business, and I said, I could do that. When I left my law firm, I went to work as a real estate lawyer for my landlord, a big public company called Bellemead Development Corporation. I learned the business while I was there, and when I had the opportunity to move over to the business side, I did."