NYU's Michael Steinhardt, Wall Street and Golan Heights Oil Connection: Part 7

NYU Trustee Steinhardt’s Historic NYU-Larry Tisch Connection

In his 2001 No Bull book, Steinhardt also described the historical business connections that his Wall Street speculation hedge fund firms have historically had with tax-exempt and “non-profit” universities like NYU and with the now-deceased former NYU board of trustees chairman Larry Tisch:

“…Larry Tisch…had been one of the original investors in Steinhardt Partners…He agreed to commit some pension fund money from two companies that he controlled: Loew’s Corporation and Lorillard. In addition, as the Chairman of the Board of Trustees at New York University, he agreed to invest some of the school’s endowment with us…In large part because of Larry’s support, we launched Institutional Partners, LP, with $12 million…In time, we attracted an elite group of blue-chip investors: the World Bank, Carnegie Corporation, Yale University, Duke University, University of Minnesota…Within 2 years, the fund was about $100 million. Eventually, it grew to over $1 billion…Allocating to hedge funds is a common practice for endowments and foundations…”

Coincidentally, as Christopher Winians noted in his book The King of Cash: The Inside Story of Laurence Tisch, the “investment formula” of the former NYU Board of Trustees chairman--who apparently used “tax-exempt” NYU’s endowment money to provide some Wall Street speculation money for Steinhardt’s for-profit hedge fund firm--was to “exploit hidden tax benefits;” and after former NYU Board of Trustees Chairman Tisch’s Loew’s Corporation purchased its Lorillard tobacco industry subsidiary in 1968, “Loew’s would come to depend heavily on the cigarette business for much of its earnings.”

(end of part 7)