The New York Observer » Edgar Bronfman Jr

Edgar Bronfman Jr. Loves His Wife to the Tune of $16 M.

Edgar Bronfman Jr. announced yesterday that he was stepping down from his position as the chairman of Warner Music Group, effective January 31. Turns out he is stepping down from his perch at 812 Park Avenue, as well.

According to city records, Mr. Bronfman has transferred sole control of the triplex penthouse to his wife Clarissa Bronfman, with whom he bought the home in May for $16 million. Read More

Charles Bronfman Makes Seven-Month Bet on 810 Fifth

CORRECTION: This home actually belongs to Charles Bronfman, not his brother Edgar Jr. Not nearly the prolific property swapper his nephew is, Charles called 838 Fifth Avenue home for a decade before he bought this co-op last November, paying $21 million for the sixth floor at 810 Fifth. It is now back on the Read More

And Not a Penny Less for Bronfman’s Park Ave Triplex

Gordon and Dailey Jones Pattee had been trying to sell their triplex atop 812 Park Avenue since November 2007. The 15-room home came on the market for $36.5 million before being cut three times: $29.75 million, $22 million, $15.9 million. It appears the Pattees would budge no further.

As The Observer reported on Tuesday, Read More

Bronfman’s Back! Edgar Jr.’s Unexpected Return from London

Seagram heir and Warner Music maestro Edgar Bronfman Jr. spent a good part of his life growing up around the globe. He decided two years ago that his kids should have the same experience and relocated them to London, though always with the plan to return when the eldest reached high-school age.

When Read More

Bronfman Socked on Muppet Mansion by Murdoch Minion

In a flurry of house-swapping three years ago, at the height of the real estate mania, Edgar Bronfman Jr. traded a half-dozen properties with a total price tag exceeding $115 million, a spree that culminated in the fall of 2008 with his purchase of 117-119 East 69th Street for $28.5 million. The 40-foot-wide home Read More

Zee Hangover

Did you notice all the gauzy coverage of the merger of America Online and Time Warner last month? It was pegged to the 10th anniversary of the deal, now widely derided as the “worst merger in history” and which cost shareholders more than $100 billion.

But it’s starting to feel like a long time ago Read More

The Observer 100 Index: Week One

This year will bring either a dazzlingly financial apocalypse (the analyst Howard Davidowitz has said we're on "a death march"), a revival that catapults New York into a new era of giddy splendor, or an uneven and slow sludge back to normalcy. Manhattan will expire, sparkle, or crawl.

One comparatively easy way to take the city's Read More

Introducing the Observer 100 Index

One comparatively easy way to take the Read More

The Bed-Stuy Bronfman

On a cold, miserable afternoon in mid-November, Ben Bronfman stepped out of a cab in front of the United Nations and walked through the security checkpoint, past the clusters of tourists in the lobby, and up to the Delegates Dining Room on the third floor, where there was a fancy luncheon to ramp things up Read More

Bronfman Finishes 1040 Fifth Deal for $21 M.

Edgar Bronfman Jr. has sold his 11-room duplex at 1040 Fifth Avenue for $21 million.

My colleague Max Abelson reported in June that the Warner Music chairman and liquor heir had gone to contract for between $20 million and $21 million. That was below the asking price of $24 million but above the price Read More

Bronfman Junior Strikes Again! Buys Muppets Mansion for $28.5 M.

In April, when Leslie and Brian Brille, the global head of investment banking for Bank of America, put their East 69th Street mansion on the market for $32 million, only three years after they bought it from Jim Henson’s estate for $12.4 million, this reporter wondered about fickleness.

“He decided,” broker Read More

Where’s the Fizz? Bronfman Selling 1040 Fifth Co-op for Below Asking

The colossal Manhattan real estate story of Edgar Bronfman Jr., Seagram liquor grandson and Warner Music Group CEO, has finally taken a comparatively imperfect turn. Eight months after he sold his East 64th Street townhouse to a Russian oil billionaire for $50 million, even though he paid $4,375,000 for the property in 1994, his 11-room Read More

What A Country! Russian Mogul Could Set Record: $150 M. Apartment

Russian-born and Harvard-educated finance billionaire Leonard Blavatnik has signed a letter of intent to buy a $150 million apartment on East 77th Street, The New York Post is reporting this morning.

"The price would be twice as large as the previous record listing in New York City, and nearly $50 million more than last year's Read More

Second Most Expensive New York Townhouse Sale a Done Deal

It's official: Oil tycoon Len Blavatnik has paid exactly $50 million for his friend Edgar Bronfman Jr.’s townhouse at 15 East 64th Street, the second biggest New York townhouse deal ever.

The sales deed was filed in city records this morning, the day after iconic uptown broker Linda Stein was found murdered in her posh Read More