Heir Mail #1
Why heiresses? Plus, a beer scionness takes on Donald Trump's photographer in her battle to remain mayor of Myrtle Beach.
Hello and welcome to Heir Mail! The genesis and operating principle of this newsletter is simple: I (Meredith Haggerty, hi hi hi) started a Google Alert for the word “heiress,” and this newsletter will come from it.
Who doesn’t enjoy a story about an heiress from time to time? They’re fantastically rich and definitionally undeserving, occasionally philanthropic, often glamorous but, sometimes, fascinatingly unglamourous. The word calls to mind screwball comedies and Victorian novels about constraint and tabloid stories featuring private jets, three of my favorite genres. Qualms about capitalism and consumerism and the way money moves in America aside, I know I can’t help but but perk up when offered an article about a lady who’s wealthy by a fluke of fate. Probably a wish-fulfillment thing.
It might be fucked to think about a whole subcategory of the human experience — women, specifically, whose situations are the product of their birth — as something like a guilty pleasure, but it is not quite as fucked as the system of inherited wealth.
A programming note: heiresses of all genders may(?) be covered herein — I did set a Google Alert for the word “heir,” after my friend Fritz Brantley came up with this perfect name — but, IDK, maybe not. For one thing, the Alert is a mess; the word is used variously to refer to unrelated business successors, people who are good at basketball in ways similar to people who have previously been good at basketball, regular men in their relationship to God, just all sorts of shit. It’s been decoupled to some degree from the reality of “rich from money that someone you’re related to gives you by dying.” But worse, sometimes it does mean real male heirs, like Prince Charles for chrissakes, and I just don’t know that I’ll be as fun or even as kind about them. (This time I crammed them at the bottom.)
So: mostly heiresses, probably, and hey, maybe some small analysis of both the media’s and my own ingrained sexism and double standards. Or maybe just more ingrained sexism and double standards, we’ll have to see what my mood is like.
“Commodities Heiress Taps Middle East for Fresh Cash”, from FINews.com
“Billionaire Louis-Dreyfus Finds Costly Escape From Debt Drama,” from Newsmax — but originally from Bloomberg.
Margarita Dreyfus is the head of Louis Dreyfus, a name you just might feel familiar with. Margarita is Julia’s second cousin once removed — by marriage — and she’s also the recipient of her late husband’s French commodities house, which buy and sells grains but like, big time. The Russian-born billionaire widow is selling nearly half her whole thing to “a vehicle of Abu Dhabi's sovereign wealth fund,” shortly after getting a billion dollar loan from Credit Suisse. She’s been trying, basically, to buy out her in-laws. (Not JLD.) They’ve all been clashing since Margarita’s husband died.
According to a goss-bringing Bloomberg piece (found via Newsmax, which: oof), Margarita’s problems began when she disagreed with the man her husband left in charge of the conglomerate, Jacques Veyrat. Jacques, who Bloomberg notes went to fancy schools, wanted to merge with a different, Singaporean grain merchant; Margarita was like, “no, my husband’s great grandchildren!” and Jacques left. The rest of the family was pissed and started selling shares, which as per company bylaws or some such, Margarita had to buy for top dollar.
There’s more — a Chinese Starbucks doing bad money stuff, Margarita hiring a former Miami Dolphin named Mayo for a business job — but at a certain point I’m plagiarizing Bloomberg. Read it! Margarita’s been digging herself out of debt since, now with the help of the UAE.
FInews.com also notes that Margarita’s current boyfriend Philipp Hildebrand is a former Swiss banker, current BlackRock exec, and a contender for an important job at the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. According to Wikipedia, the OECD is “an intergovernmental economic organization” based out of Paris, but most pressingly I’d say that if someone wants to go there from BlackRock — an global investment management corp where the Wikipedia “criticism” section is basically “they own everything” — it must be a terribly big deal. A million conspiracy theories have bloomed behind my eyes since learning of Philipp’s existence.
(In the heir alert, I discovered that Margarita has three sons, one of whom just bought himself some soccer team. Perhaps the heirs will prove unavoidable.)
Heiress points: Distant relation of Elaine Benes, 10 points. Family squabbles, 50 points. Selling out to the UAE, 25 points. Highly manicured eyebrows I could not KEEP myself from mentioning in this list, 5 points. A marital inheritance and a powerful partner, 100 points. 190 heiress points!
Net Worth Estimate: $5.6 billion, according to Google.
“‘Going for Broke: The Rise of Rishi Sunak’ by Michael Ashcroft,” from PRNewswire:
Here’s some British shit! Very casually, this press release is like, “by Lord Ashcroft,” as if I know who that is.
Well! He’s the former Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party, according to his Twitter, and this is PR 101 for a book he’s written about Rishi Sunak. Rishi is a member of parliament and fairly new Chancellor of the Exchequer, who rose from humble beginnings to “the top of #BritishPolitics” as the Lord put it in a tweet; an up-and-coming Conservative who got a powerful job right before Covid and who maybe didn’t cock up as bad as Boris Johnston.
Where is our heiress?! It’s Rishi’s wife, Akshata Murthy, “whose father Narayana is known as the ‘Bill Gates of India.’” While her husband was “[tearing] up the rulebook and [going] for broke” he was also forgetting to report the companies she owned on the Register of Ministers' Interests (Kushnerian!). “At least one” of those businesses put people on furlough.
The book promises details on their romance, but the release is light on details about her. A separate Daily Mail story — not to go out of the bounds of this newsletter’s intention but I wanted more — does say she has “been lobbying” him to open beauty salons.
Heiress points: Bill Gates-esque dad, 20 points. Bill Gates-esque dad’s “fleeting jealousy,” 50 points. A story that’s largely about a bunch of dudes, - 40 points. 30 heiress points!
Net Worth Estimate: Google has nothing but RVCJ.com tags her as owning 1.4% of InfoSys and Googling “worth of InfoSys” gets me a graph. So: presumably very rich.
“Justin Theroux And Paris Hilton 'Closer Than Ever' After He Posts Sexy Pic Of Heiress?,” from Gossip Cop
“Justin Theroux, Paris Hilton have something going on? Actor posts photo of the heiress on his IG,” from EconoTimes:
Jen Aniston’s second ex-husband posted an Instagram of aughts ur-heiress Paris Hilton dressed as “hot Dobby the House Elf.” He tagged it #hottypotter. He also calls her Kuma? These headlines bury the lede.
EconoTimes explains that Australia’s New Idea magazine says — which Econo got from Gossip Cop and which I am now telling you — that Paris and Justin may have met when she was dating his The Leftovers co-star Chris Zylka. But, ET is quick to point out that Gossip Cop disagrees, saying, perfectly:
GC stated that Justin Theroux also has photos of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and his ex-wife, Jennifer Aniston, on his IG. Thus, people should not read much about the actor posting photos of women he is close to or his friends.
Heiress points: Paris, an icon of heiresshood, immediate 100 points. Possibly cheating on a hot actor with his hotter, more famous costar, 20 points. The light derision of multiple gossip sites, 30 points. Dressing up as a Harry Potter character when you’re Paris Hilton, -15 points for some reason I’m sorry. 135 heiress points!
Net Worth Estimate: $300 million, according to Express.
“Beer Heiress Says She Will Seek Re-Election For MB Mayor,” from Myrtle Beach SC (“Inspired News and Reviews”):
Brenda Bethune of Better Brand Beer believes she’s best bet for Beach… comma Myrtle mayorship. Her opponent is, sure why not, Donald Trump’s photographer, a man named Gene Ho.
I’m just real glad I started this newsletter, so I can pass you hidden gem articles like this.
You learn, reading, that Brenda inherited the distributorship from her father, and is looking to put a million dollars into her campaign. Then Myrtle Beach SC (“Inspired News and Reviews”) website puts it out there: “Over the past three years, Horry County Councilmen have best described Mayor Bethune as combative, ill tempered, thin chinned, deceptive, and wrong headed.” Thin chinned! What!?
The site explains Brenda sued the county (on behalf of Myrtle Beach) over a hospitality tax class action, taking the case up to the state Supreme Court, and then it dings her for high crime and calls her governance “as chaotic as her own personal life.” She’s “definitely the most liberal city official ever elected to local office,” the author writes (oh well!) before reproducing her donation request in full.
Heiress points: Alliterative individual and company names, 30 points. Taking the cash to politics, 40 points. Lawsuits and crime rates and an obscurely referenced messy personal life, 75 points. Hated by plebes and media, 75 points. 220 heiress points!
Net Worth Estimate: $100 million for the beer biz, according Myrtle Beach SC (“Inspired News and Reviews”).
From the rest of the Alert
The third episode of the second season of The Mandalorian got caught in my Google alert, as it is in fact called The Heiress (and stars Bryce Dallas Howard, heir to the Richie Cunningham estate). Annoying for me, but Baby Yoda!
This rundown of the Patty Hearst saga on what appears to be a kind of Australian Bustle.
The genuinely sad tale of a Honor Uloth, the 19-year-old Guinness heiress who drowned this summer at family barbecue. A reminder that money can’t actually protect anyone fully from the grisly reality of being alive, and a family’s actual tragedy.
A mention in a New York Post story about the FBI meeting with Epstein accusers of Ghislane Maxwell who… I didn’t have the wherewithal to get into. Maybe another week! Try any podcast! But also feel free to reply to this email with you would cast to play her in the movie, because if you don’t already have an answer to that then I’m surprised you signed up for this newsletter.
And finally, in the heirs
The crown prince of Dubai loves skydiving, wealthy man opens Vegas nightclub, Samsung son takes over for departed dad, a Rothschild might be on his way to getting back some money that the Nazis stole.