Cityfile: New York's Most Notable and Influential

Pete Peterson Still Alive, Still Giving Money Away | A handful of news outlets have been reporting that Michael Bloomberg is officially the "most generous living man in America," having given away a total of $235 million over the course of 2008, according to The Chronicle of Philanthropy. Bloomberg didn't come in No. 1 on the list, though. As NY1 tells it, "Bloomberg actually ranked ninth overall on the list. He was topped by eight others who died last year and gave greater amounts away in their wills." We're guessing this news will come as a big surprise to the still-living couple that came in at No. 3, Pete Peterson and his wife, Joan Ganz Cooney. [NY1, NYT]

Monica Noel, the wife of disgraced hedge fund manager, protested this week to the Post that she and her husband aren't really all that rich, notwithstanding the $500 million her husband's firm is estimated to have collected just by steering clients to invest with Bernie Madoff: "You write [that] our five daughters were brought up in the lap of luxury in their Greenwich estate. We don't live in an estate. We live in a normal house that was a cottage on two acres." That the "cottage" is just one of five properties that the Noels call home—there's also an apartment on Park Avenue, homes in Southampton and Palm Beach, and a "tropical retreat" in Mustique—Monica's claim doesn't seem to hold much water. But you wouldn't mistake the Noels for heavy-hitting philanthropists, at least judging by the couple's charitable donations in recent years. In 2006 (the last year for which info is available), the Walter and Monica Noel Family Foundation handed out a grand total of $169,000, most of it distributed in amounts of $250 or $500 to organizations like Americares, the YMCA of Greenwich, and the International Rescue Committee. After the jump, the complete list of non-profit groups that benefited from Noel's lucrative relationship with Bernie Madoff. More

What $2.5 Million Buys You These Days | You won't get a massive apartment for $2.5 million, but you can stamp your name on one of the city's most prominent landmarks for that amount. Two plaques attached to the famed fountain in Washington Square Park were unveiled today. They're dedicated to Larry and Bob Tisch, the late fathers of Jon, Andrew, Laurie, Steve, and Jim Tisch. Sounds like the Tisch family got a pretty good deal. Poor Steve Schwarzman had to cough up $100 million for a plaque the same size outside the New York Public Library! [Curbed]

The Effect on Non-Profits | Lehman Brothers gave $39 million to charity last year; Merrill Lynch handed out $43.7 million in 2007. So it's not surprising that charities in the city are now wondering how they're going to make ends meet. [Forbes]

One things we learned from BlackBook's interview with "executive/heiress" Ivanka Trump: that one of the causes she's particularly passionate about is her brother Eric's foundation. Who knew The Donald's youngest son from his marriage to Ivana was "dedicated to improving the lives of children battling life-threatening or debilitating medical conditions"? The Eric Trump Foundation has a website, which you can peruse here. A look at the Events section might explain why it was on Ivanka's mind: The foundation's annual golf outing is taking place this afternoon at the Trump National Golf Club in Westchester. 

With his brother Donald, Si Newhouse controls Advance Publications, the publishing empire that owns Condé Nast, a long list of newspapers, and countless other media assets. It's a business he inherited from his father. And it's made him one of New York's richest men for decades now, with a net worth estimated by Forbes earlier this year at $8.5 billion. A reclusive figure, Newhouse rarely speaks with reporters or attends events, preferring his top editors (like Anna Wintour, Graydon Carter, David Remnick) and executives (Chuck Townsend, Richard Beckman, David Carey) to talk to the media and soak up the limelight instead. But it's the low-key mogul, of course, who takes home the big checks, which he spends on art (his Picasso collection is reportedly enormous) and donating money to various philanthropic concerns. Which causes exactly? More

It's been a rough few months for Lehman Brothers CEO Dick Fuld. Many harbor doubts the bank will survive as an independent firm for much longer; clients have been abandoning Lehman in droves; and Fuld has been aggressively trying to raise money, a process that hasn't been easy although he may have found a savior in a Korean bank as of this morning. No matter what the outcome, though, it's clear Fuld's golden reputation has been tarnished. Several of his deputies have been forced out. Last week he announced another round of layoffs that will cut the payroll by 1,500 jobs. So who doesn't dislike Dick at this moment? The beneficiaries of the Kathy and Richard S. Fuld Family Foundation are presumably standing by his side, just as long as he makes good on all the donations he's promised. After the jump, what Fuld did with the $1.8 million he donated to charity for the most recent year publicly available, including the Museum of Modern Art ($379,960) and Middlebury College ($477,500). We're guessing, though, that Lehman doesn't have too many developmentally disabled employees in the mailroom. Fuld's smallest donation? A $100 check to Special Olympics of Connecticut.More

Donna Karan no longer controls the company that bears her name: LVMH purchased the company in 2001 for $643 million, leaving her with an estimated $400 million fortune. She remains the company's creative director, of course, but she also keeps busy with philanthropic work. Last year the Queens-born designer shelled out $2.7 to various causes, including the $1 million to the Spirituality for Kids Foundation, which teaches Kabbalah to kids in schools. (Naturally, Madonna's also a big donor.) A fan of all sorts of new-age fads (she's expressed her fondness for "therapeutic screaming" and past life regressions in the past), Karan also has a soft spot for Tibet. Her Karan Weiss Foundation (which reflects the name of her late husband) contributed $200,000 to The Norbulingka Institute, which is dedicated to preserving Tibetan culture, and $20,000 to the International Tibetan Medical Association. The entire list—including her token $1,000 contribution to Bill Clinton's Global Initiative and the $59,000 she gave to pal Russell Simmons' foundation—after the jump.More

Very little has ever been revealed about the business dealings of Jeffrey Epstein, the shadowy money manager who will be spending the next 16 months or so in a Palm Beach jail cell after pleading to soliciting an underage prostitute in late June. Long described as "mysterious" and "reclusive," the only client of his who has been confirmed over the years has been Leslie "Les" Wexner, the billionaire founder of Limited Brands. Epstein once boasted to a reporter that he wouldn't even consider taking on a client who didn't have a billion dollars or more in the bank. You can now add a new billionaire to the list of Epstein associates: Leon Black, the co-founder of Apollo Management. Black recruited Epstein to serve on the board of his charitable organization, the Leon D. Black Foundation. Listed on the non-profit's IRS returns alongside Leon and his wife, Debra: Epstein's name and the address of the waterfront home where Epstein was accused of carrying out his sexual misdeeds with minors. More on this jaw-dropping revelation below.More

Harvey Weinstein has had trouble coming up with box office hits as of late (and has had to contend with speculation that his film company may not remain independent for much longer), but he's not exactly in the poor house. He's got a lavish townhouse in the Village and a massive spread in Connecticut. And he's diversified into cable channels, magazines, websites, bars, and fashion companies. Does he give back to the community? Not so much! At least not when it comes to writing checks in honor of his mother and late father, Miriam and Max, for whom his previous film company, Miramax was named (and which he sold to Disney for about $80 million in 1993). Last year, the Max Family Foundation, which is controlled by Harvey and his brother Bob, handed out $96,000. When you subtract the foundation's legal and accounting expenses, though, the Weinsteins' charitable contributions total just $64,000. Documentation after the jump!More

Henry Kravis announced this week that his private equity powerhouse, KKR, plans to go public by the end of the year, a move that will probably end up making him substantially richer than he already is. (He was worth $5.5 billion in 2007, according to Forbes.) What does Henry do with his riches? He buys expensive homes for one thing, like the manse in Palm Beach he purchased in 2006 for $50 million (and which didn't even come with an oceanfront view). No, modesty and humility has never Kravis' strong suit. This is, after all, a man who once lived in a house where his chef could pipe the smell of freshly-baked croissants and coffee into the guestrooms to gently wake them up in the morning. (Sure beats that Dream Machine clock-radio you've been using for the past decade!) But Kravis also directs a fair amount of cash to charity with his third wife, Marie-Josee. In 2006, the couple handed out $5.9 million to a long list of art, culture, and educational institutions. The David Saltzman-led Robin Hood Foundation took home $1 million, as did Rockefeller University. The smallest contribution? The $200 the Kravises gave to Project Angel Food, which feeds people homebound by HIV/AIDS.  The full list of donations by the Marie-Josee and Henry R. Kravis Foundation after the jump.More

If you talk to Donald Trump, he'll happily tell you he's worth $6 billion. No one really believes that figure, of course. Forbes estimated his net worth at $3 billion in 2008. And Tim O'Brien, the New York Times reporter who wrote the 2005 book TrumpNation and devoted an entire chapter to debunking estimates of Trump's riches, pegged the figure at $150 million. (The suggestion that Trump was not, in fact, a billionaire led The Donald to file a libel suit against O'Brien and his publisher for $5 billion.) Presumably even O'Brien would concede Trump is worth more than $150 million these days, what with all those deals to license his name to developments from Denver to Dubai and lines of steak, water, clothing, cologne, and motor oil. (Okay, we made that last one up.) When it comes to the Donald J. Trump Foundation, however, it may not be in his best interest to exaggerate. Because if he really was worth $6 billion, he'd also be one of the cheapest men in the city. Trump handed out just $850,000 last year, the equivalent of someone worth $1 million giving away a total of $141. It's progress, though! The figure is triple what he gave away in 2003. More

JPMorgan chief Jamie Dimon doesn't exactly have a rep as the most sympathetic guy. He's long been known to berate employees, he once got physical with a former colleague, Deryck Maughan, and he's been just as blunt with the press. ("What do I think of our competitors? I hate them! I want them to bleed!" he once exclaimed when asked about his competition.) More recently, he made news after he told Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit to "stop being such a jerk" on a conference call. So it might come as some surprise that he's a wee bit more generous than Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein when it comes to writing checks to charity. Dimon handed out $1.8 million last year (compared to Blankfein's paltry $1.5 million), including a $1 million gift to the University of Chicago and $120,000 to Columbia's National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse. The full report after the jump. More

It's been more than ten years since Seinfeld went off the air, but Jerry Seinfeld still rakes it in: It's been estimated he collects as much as $60 million a year from reruns, DVD sales, and the occasional stand-up gig. Of course, he and wife Jessica know how to spend that money, too. But in addition to their many extravagances (huge apartment in the Beresford, massive estate in East Hampton, hundreds of Porsches), the couple donates a good chunk of change to charity. So which charities are the beneficiaries of the esteemed Seinfeld Family Foundation? Jerry's largest donation was to Scholarship America ($950,905). But he also handed over some cash to other causes near and dear, like the Comedy Cures Foundation ($1,000) and a non-profit that teaches chess to public high school students ($500). Have a look for yourself at the $3 million the Seinfelds handed out in 2006 after the jump.More

You didn't think Dan Loeb had a heart, did you? Not withstanding the hedge fund mogul's rep for writing vicious letters to CEOs and otherwise terrifying underperforming management teams, Loeb likes to give a couple of bucks to charity from time to time, too. At least he was good for $778,615 in 2006. Where did the money go? He gave 100K to the Jewish Enrichment Center and 75K to the Michael J. Fox Foundation. The public radio station WNYC wasn't as lucky: The billionaire gave the non-profit $100. The one-time ladies' man does, however, seem to have a bit more sympathy for young anorexic women: Loeb made out a check for $250 to the National Eating Disorder Association. The entirety of his charitable activities for 2006 after the jump. More