Lynn Tilton took umbrage when a Ford executive recently suggested that, as the head of an $8 billion private equity firm, Patriarch Partners, which specializes in distressed industrial companies, she “strips and flips” her targets. “It’s only men that I strip and flip,” she said, according to the Journal. “My companies I hold long and close to my heart.” And all signs point to the fact that the CEO, whose “office uniform usually includes five-inch stilettos, an eight-carat diamond necklace and the occasional black leather jumpsuit” isn’t kidding. Last year, she told Planet Money she had “fond memories of what I had once done with tassels,” and according to today’s paper:
Her office walls are filled with whips and handcuffs sent to her by friends, Hashemite daggers given to her by Middle Eastern royals, New Age paintings and a portrait of her stretched across the hood of a black Mercedes.
But when it comes to business, Tilton, a former “aspiring poet” who now commutes to her New York office by helicopter and “owns homes in Florida, Arizona, Hawaii, and a Italian villa on Lake Como, just up the mountain from George Clooney,” is “a benevolent dictator.”
But when it comes to business, Tilton, a former “aspiring poet” who now commutes to her New York office by helicopter and “owns homes in Florida, Arizona, Hawaii, and a Italian villa on Lake Como, just up the mountain from George Clooney,” is “a benevolent dictator.”
It helps, though, if she knows your safe word.
