Billionaire corporate raider Ron Perelman (#35 on the Forbes 400, with an estimated $10 billion net worth) is well known to M&A lawyers for his takeover of Revlon, which gave us the eponymous “Revlon duties.” He’s also well known to fans of the glitterati for having been married to actress Ellen Barkin.
That marriage didn’t end well, and it looks like his relationship with his business partner has gone sour, too.
The story so far and the partner’s BigLaw background, after the jump.
Perelman and Don Drapkin ran MacAndrews & Forbes together for 20 years – that, by the way, is the candy-distribution company that became the holding company Perelman used as the vehicle for the Revlon takeover. Drapkin joined from partnership at Skadden in 1986, just after the takeover was complete. Prior to Skadden, he was at Cravath.
(Another side note, Perelman’s lawyer on the litigation was Stuart Shapiro, then of Skadden. Wachtell was Revlon’s counsel – Marty Lipton advised the board and Herb Wachtell argued at the trials. Shapiro basically said that Lipton’s extensive board minutes “made” the case for Perelman, because “he [Lipton] apparently believes in the blanket right of boards to make judgments. These notes reveal his philophical position. But they can only be useful to the opposition.” The quote is from Takeover – The New Wall Street Warriors: the Men, the Money, the Impact, by Moira Johnston, which is a must-read for fans of M&A history.)
Back to current events. In May 2007, Drapkin left Perelman for Lazard at the invitation of Bruce Wasserstein and everything appeared copacetic. At the time, Perelman said Drapkin had “done a terrific job” and would miss him.
Then something changed Perelman’s mind and he decided not to play nice. In February, he sued Drapkin over a $5 million balance on a separation agreement, claiming Drapkin had breached by failing to return some files that had been stored on a secretary’s laptop. Drapkin has countersued for an additional $2.5 million that Perelman supposedly hasn’t coughed up for cashing out Drapkin’s shares in a portfolio company.
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