The Kennedy fortune: How much, and who gets it?
Published 6:16 pm Friday, August 28, 2009
The Kennedy fortune is storied and complex and something of a mystery. The family is rich, but how rich are they really?
Investigative journalist Gerald Posner did some digging for The Daily Beast and unearthed some surprising details about the clan’s wealth. Posner is also the author of several books, including “Case Closed,” (1993) which explores the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
“Joe Kennedy set his family trusts so they would be hidden from public scrutiny,” Posner said. “So although it’s possible to get a lot of information from real estate records, Senate and congressional disclosure forms, and published reports over several decades, many details remain secrets known only to the Kennedys.”
Suffice to say, the fortune is nearly impossible to put a figure on. “The labyrinth of trusts, which dole out only a small amount of money annually to the large Kennedy clan, are invested conservatively and run by financial experts whose goal is to maintain the principal,” Posner writes at www.thedailybeast.com. “As a result, they were not decimated by the economic tsunami of the past 18 months, and in the case of Teddy’s personal wealth, have dramatically increased over the past four years.”
Based on Senate financial-disclosure reports, Posner estimates Kennedy’s personal wealth in 2008 at $45 million to $150 million. No will has been publicly revealed, so how his estate will be divided is unclear.
As for how the fortune was accumulated in the first place, patriarch Joseph Kennedy made a lot of money with his liquor distribution business, as people know. But, writes Posner, he’d left that behind in 1946, and most of the wealth he passed on — an estimated $400 million at the time of his death in 1969 — came from real-estate speculation.
In 1998, writes Posner, the Kennedy family undertook an immensely smart transaction: the sale of Chicago’s Merchandise Mart, “the world’s largest commercial structure,” for $600 million. It had been acquired by Kennedy in 1945 for $12.5 million. Ted Kennedy and his sisters, Eunice, Patricia and Jean, each got $75 million. President John F. Kennedy’s children, Caroline and John Jr., each got $37.5 million, and Sen. Robert Kennedy’s widow, Ethel, and her 11 children received $75 million.
(Bobby Kennedy’s son Christopher, who happens to be chief executive of the Merchandise Mart, had been expected to seek the Democratic nomination for President Barack Obama’s former U.S. Senate seat in Illinois in 2010, but announced in August that he would not seek office.)
Naturally, with lots of heirs and lots of money tied up in trusts, there have been unconfirmed reports of tension, Posner writes.
The Kennedy family had no comment.
