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The Billionaire Battle in the Bahamas

The whole thing began over a puddle in a driveway.

The two men are next-door neighbors in Lyford Cay, a gated community on New Providence, an island in the Bahamas, and for years it had been a peaceful adjacency. Because both of them happen to be billionaires, it is a picturesque driveway, lined by casuarina trees and triple Alexander palms, 200 feet north of a stunning body of water known as Clifton Bay and 100 feet south of an even more stunning vista upon the Atlantic Ocean.

It is less a driveway than a road—but also a portion of road that is shared by both neighbors and nobody else, owing to how it cuts right through one man’s property and ends at the other man’s, which occupies the westernmost tip of the island. And we’re talking about a land of eight-figure beachfront properties, where the houses are very close to each other—where one man’s dining room is only about 200 feet from the other’s revolving acrylic discotheque floor and the glass walls that enclose it with a steady cascade of water.

An “easement” is what the driveway’s creator, the developer E. P. Taylor, a Canadian brewing tycoon, termed this shared passage when he established Lyford Cay in 1955. (The road itself he saw fit to name E. P. Taylor Drive.) But just as one man’s driveway is another man’s easement, one neighbor’s cocktail party is another’s sleepless night due to the fact that there are 2,000 Bahamians—plus a lot of young women from islands throughout the Atlantic, not to mention Europe—whooping it up at the topless bacchanal next door. And one man’s overflow of parked cars along the driveway on that sleepless neighbor’s side of the property line is another man’s reason to have the section of the driveway that cuts through his property re-graded and rebuilt, adding a dip and tall flagstone walls on either side, leaving no shoulder space for anybody to ever conceivably think of parking there, while also screening the driveway from view.

The dip created a drainage problem when it rained: the puddling. “It was smelly. And it had mosquitoes. And in order to come to our place you had to go and wear rubber boots to come and knock on our door,” says Peter Nygard, a Canadian manufacturer of women’s wear and the neighbor at the end of the road who threw the parties. In a court filing, he referred to it as “a toilet drain.”

“Nygard likes the idea that people think they’re going to a separate island when they go to his place,” says Louis Bacon, a titan of New York finance and the neighbor who constructed the strategic no-parking zone. “Now it kind of looks like what the English call a ha-ha: the road drops and it feels more private. It’s a better entrance for his guests and better for me too.”

But that was then, and this is now. And somehow, what began in 2007 with a bit of irritation over runoff has escalated to a battle royal encompassing no fewer than 16 legal actions between Nygard and Bacon and their associates, in which both sides are claiming damages in the tens of millions of dollars and lobbing allegations of activities that include vandalism, bribery, insider trading, arson, murder, destruction of the fragile seabed, and having a close association with the Ku Klux Klan.

It has reached a point where neither man, though each used to consider Lyford Cay his rightful home, spends much time there anymore. Nygard, unable to obtain government permits to rebuild his six-acre, Mayan-inspired compound after an electrical fire in 2009 demolished most of the structures—including the 32,000-square-foot “grand hall,” with its 100,000-pound glass ceiling—has been left to live out of his study when he does visit, and has stopped throwing parties altogether. He blames the man next door for all of it, citing a string of environmental-degradation suits that Bacon has filed against him in court.

SueLyn Medeiros and Nygard at Bahamas Fashion Week, in Nassau, 2008.

Bacon hasn’t set foot in the Bahamas in more than a year, claiming it would put his personal safety at risk. In January 2015, he leveled a $100 million defamation complaint against Nygard in New York, where both men’s businesses are headquartered. Nygard, the suit alleges, has been the “ringleader” behind a vast multi-media smear campaign—TV and radio ads purchased, Web sites created, videos doctored, T-shirts printed, and even “hate rallies” staged with parades through Nassau—all in the name of labeling Bacon a racist, a thief, and a “terrorist,” and bearing messages such as BACON GO HOME.

Nygard filed a counterclaim and tells anybody who will listen that Bacon is trying to destroy him out of a simple desire to take over his property, claiming that some years ago—Nygard can’t recall when—a real-estate agent came to his house on Bacon’s behalf and offered $100 million for the place. When he turned him down, the agent replied that Bacon would get the property “one way or another,” Nygard claims, adding that he doesn’t know the man’s name and can’t remember where he worked, “because it was such a joke to me.” Even so, he says, he took it as a threat. (Bacon has said he made no such offer and was never interested in acquiring Nygard’s land.)

Nygard vows he will never sell and says that he has never met anybody “that smart, that competitive, in my life. He reminds me of Hitler.”

“Peter Pinocchio,” Bacon calls Nygard in an open letter he published in the Bahamas Tribune, noting his habit of “playing footsie with the truth.”

In This Corner

At 74, with his long white hair and vigorously spread family tree (he has had eight children with five women), Nygard is something like the Hugh Hefner of down-market retail. Aesthetically—shirt unbuttoned to the navel, tight black jeans, and some sort of glitter he applies to his suntanned arms after showering—he brings to mind a mash-up of Sam Walton and Gunther Gebel-Williams, the circus-animal trainer.

Some things you should know about Nygard: His personal history involves emigrating from Finland to Manitoba with his family when he was eight and living out of a converted coalbin. At 24 he purchased a share in a clothing-manufacturing company with an $8,000 loan, and before long renamed it Nygard. Today, it has about a dozen lines of inexpensive apparel, aimed mostly at middle-aged shoppers and available in more than 200 Nygard stores and other retail chains in North America, and does $500 million in annual sales. He dated Anna Nicole Smith for several years.

He is famous in the Bahamas. He flies there in a private jet that bears the words PETER NYGARD N FORCE and once reportedly had a stripper’s pole inside. He sued a former associate for claiming that Nygard had “deliberately hired celebrity lookalikes” to attend his Oscar party, according to the lawsuit. The case was eventually settled. He is obsessed with longevity. He was giving himself testosterone shots every other day and made arrangements with a lab to receive regular injections of his own stem cells. He talks about the virtues of exercise and healthy eating, and he takes about 50 pills a day—“vitamins, supplements, pharmaceuticals,” he says. “What is it that I’m working on? Getting younger.”

More than anything, Nygard is proud of his concrete sanctuary, which in 1992 he persuaded the Bahamian government to rename Nygard Cay to coincide with a Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous segment. For the preceding 400 years it had been known as Simms Point. Nygard designed and constructed the compound himself over more than two decades. (“To give Nygard credit, he’s industrious,” Bacon concedes. “I used to see him out there in his front loader.”) Even with the main house at Nygard Cay mostly in ruins six years after the fire—the grand staircase that ran through it is now more of an open-air gangway—there’s still plenty to marvel at: carved dragons, 60-foot ziggurats with hundreds of torches lit individually every night by his staff, giant statues of nude women modeled on his former girlfriends, and what he claims is the world’s largest sauna, a 6,000-square-foot A-frame lodge constructed of Canadian-pine logs that are 2 feet thick and 28 feet long. “We went and got a special barge, huge undertaking,” he says of importing them, adding that it was the first building he erected. “Every Finn starts with the saunas.”

The pool and gazebo at Nygard’s six-acre estate.

Nygard and his friends sometimes refer to his estate as “Disneyland on steroids.” Chichén Ibiza is more like it. A squadron of peacocks strut on the grounds. Giant urns belch smoke like volcanoes. Coiled stone cobras hiss steam at sunset. The multi-hued structures are festooned with thousands of colored lightbulbs.

He’s struggling to get approval to rebuild from the Bahamian government but may want the next iteration to resemble a spaceship. “I’m into a lot of other kind of design, the New York design—it’s more techy,” he says. He won’t think of trying to replicate what he already built. “You know that song, ‘Someone left the cake out in the rain’? I lost that recipe. ‘I’ll never have that recipe again.’ ” He’s got no idea how much money he put into it the first time.

Nygard misses the life he had in Lyford before Bacon—whom he refers to as “my nice neighbor”—began to get in the way. He no longer holds his Sunday-night “pamper parties,” which offered everybody free spa treatments. “It just tore a heart out of me,” Nygard says. “This was my dream, my life wrapped up in here.” But tonight he’s still having fun. In his mirrored gym, which now functions as the dining room, he eats dinner and downs the contents of a meticulously marked Baggie full of pills handed to him by a young personal assistant. He mentions that his assistant is “one of my main girlfriends.”

Soon, they’re joined by a couple of other women, who have just arrived from Miami, and several members of the Bahamian men’s volleyball team. They all consider driving to town for the parade celebrating Junkanoo, a national holiday. “You have to take off your top if we go,” he jokes with one of the ladies, flipping his hands upward from his shoulders to pantomime. Instead, everybody stays up until three A.M. playing poker.

On his TV is a frozen picture of Bacon bearing the words “5 Lies of Bacon.” Outside, on his volleyball court, one of several large signs reads, ITS [ sic ] TIME TO THROW THE TRASH OUT! LOUIS KKK BACON. The signs (which Nygard says have since been taken down) are pointed out toward the water, in case anybody sailing by in Clifton Bay should want to know more about the man. Bacon’s hedge fund is name-checked, too: MOORE CAPITAL MANAGEMENT. On another is Bacon’s face with the word CRIMINAL stamped over his forehead. The signs are easily seen from the Bacon family’s breakfast nook.

In That Corner

In a glass-tower office, framed by views of the Manhattan skyline and the Hudson River, Bacon, 59 years old and sitting tall in a chrome-and-leather chair, is surrounded by trading screens, clocks set to the times of various overseas markets, squash and yachting magazines, model aircraft. “Dealing with Nygard,” he says, “is like having dog shit on your shoe.” (Nygard’s riposte: “I recommend that he change his shoes.”)

He is short on dialogue: he has little to say that his lawyers can’t say for him, because he’s doing his best to appear aloof, as if to assert that the feud has failed to get the better of him. He’s also mortified to have his public identity joined with his antagonist’s. “Louis doesn’t like attention in the first place,” says his college friend and Lyford neighbor, Chris Brady. “But it’s almost criminal for him to even be mentioned in the same paragraph as Peter Nygard.”

Bacon grew up in a wealthy real-estate-business family in North Carolina, boarded at Episcopal High School, in Alexandria, Virginia, and graduated from Middlebury College (where he is now a trustee) and Columbia Business School. He’s a member of the Racquet and Tennis Club and the Union Club of the City of New York. He has seven children, four with his first wife and three with his current wife. The hedge fund he owns and runs has some $15 billion under management, and his estimated net worth is $1.75 billion. Forbes once summed up his investment strategy as “secretive, risk-conscious, a bit paranoid.” If, on a lark, he were persuaded to read for a movie part calling for a “handsome Wall Street kingpin type,” he’d probably be turned down because the fit seems too perfect to be credible: sculpted mandible, enviably tousled locks.

Where Nygard has made a visible mark on the cay with his estate, Bacon wants his country houses known for how meticulously they fit into their surroundings. He has a lot of them. In addition to his residence on the Upper East Side, he owns a weekend home on Robins Island, off the coast of Southampton, Long Island, where he hosts polo matches and driven-pheasant shoots. (He bought the entire 445-acre island in 1993 for $11 million.) He also owns a grouse moor in Scotland and a hunting lodge in the North of England. Then there was his Georgian town house in Knightsbridge (before he sold it), not to mention spreads he still owns in Panama, New Mexico, and North Carolina, as well as his 172,000-acre Colorado ranch, which, when he purchased it from Malcolm Forbes’s family for $175 million, in 2007, became the most expensive American residence ever. A second estate in Lyford Cay—for spillover guests or staff—has an indoor squash court.

“The common denominator is his engagement in natural resources, an astute sensitivity to all the components that make a habitat conducive to the area in question,” says Peter Talty, an architect who works for Bacon’s own personal property-management company. (“Trust me, it’s a full-time job.”) Bacon is fond of the judicious (and tax-deductible) gambit known as a conservation easement, deploying it, for example, to restore the eastern-mud-turtle population and preserve the habitat of endangered shorebirds on Robins Island.

Since 1994, he has contributed $175 million to conservationist causes, including funds to prevent Clifton Bay, a coral-lined stretch abutting Lyford Cay, from being developed as a subdivision anchored by a casino. That it has since been preserved as a national park was what, in 2013, won him the Audubon Society’s annual medal for contributions to conservation. He is “the rare wealthy businessman who sees the environment as a battleground,” says Robert F. Kennedy Jr., of the Waterkeeper Alliance lobbying group, a favorite charity of Bacon’s. “Louis funded our litigation against the factory-farm industry while he was constantly running into the head of Smithfield in his elevator, because they lived in the same building on Park Avenue,” Kennedy says. “That’s kind of funny when you think about it, particularly since his name is Bacon.”

Bacon and his wife, Gabrielle, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2014.

As for his place in Lyford, Point House, you might never guess that the owner is this rich. Even though there’s a custom-made board game called “Baconopoly” sitting on a credenza, with squares named for all of Bacon’s properties (Rutland Gate, Coral House), their identities turn out to have been affixed via printed stickers, a utilitarian gift. “In this world, you don’t disclose a lot,” says Ian Levy, who, with his wife, Charlotte, manages the household staff of seven (more when the Bacons are there). “As a former yacht captain, if I am sailing and my owner decides to cross with another boat, the other captain and I won’t even refer to our boats’ owners by name. It’s simply ‘your owner’ and ‘my owner.’ ” Even so, he does acknowledge that “a sitting queen and a former king” have been guests of the Bacons’. (The queen was Noor of Jordan.) Even the Levys’ uniforms are low-key: matching polo shirts with the Point House logo, a simple child’s drawing of a cottage.

The Levys have witnessed the feud up close and speak about their neighbor with contempt. But Bacon, they insist, has never lost his cool. “His response isn’t emotional,” Ian Levy says. “This is not a man you just phone up to tell him that a leaf’s fallen off a tree. I would tell him what happened, and he said, ‘Take photographs and refer it to the legal department.’ He responds to Peter Nygard as a problem that needs to be taken care of.”

Until he filed his defamation suit, this year, Bacon fought Nygard mostly under the auspices of an environmental campaign, joined by many Lyford residents, that sought to rectify changes to the coastline they claim Nygard is responsible for. In 2014, 103 locals put their names on a complaint against the Bahamian government, demanding that certain procedures be followed in order for Nygard to get legal clearance to rebuild. Some people in Lyford refer to Bacon’s “heroism” for taking on “the neighborhood bully.” “I’m probably the one who’s been affected the most,” Bacon says, “and I have the means to do something about it.”

An Island Refuge

Lyford Cay was designed as a gated “winter community,” the brainchild of the aforementioned E. P. Taylor and Sir Harold Christie, a scion of the Bahamian family that owned the original 3,000-acre plot at the western tip of New Providence. The houses have names that are playfully colonial: Tra La La, Safari, Tea Time, Out of Bounds. In 1962, when President Kennedy flew to Nassau for a series of private “world-ranging talks” with the British prime minister Harold Macmillan, he stayed at Taylor’s house and the P.M. stayed next door. Early residents included Henry Ford II, Aga Khan IV, Prince Rainier III of Monaco, Huntington Hartford II, Babe Paley, “and certainly the most beautiful women and some of the most powerful men in the world,” Town & Country reported in 1975, marveling at how the private telephone directory for 120 villas listed “Heinz and Menzies, Goulandris and Niarchos, McMahon and Mellon.” The piece was accompanied by a lavish Slim Aarons photo spread.

Today’s roster is sleepy by comparison: aside from Sean Connery (who, nearly a half-dozen James Bonds ago, shot Thunderball and several other films here), there are scores of semi-anonymous businessmen or their progeny. Bacon and Nygard’s neighbors prefer to keep a low profile: Count and Countess de Ravenel, of France; the Brazilian re-insurance magnate Antonio Braga; Jane Lewis, wife of the English investor Joe Lewis. “It’s quiet money,” says David Laughlin, a New York financier (second-generation Lyford) and chairman of the Lyford Cay Club.

Long before the puddle, Nygard clashed stylistically with much of the Lyford Cay establishment. He threw a lot of parties and was always doing construction. He bought his house, a modest beach bungalow, in 1984 for $1.76 million. It is now a security booth and staff office for his estate. “In the early days, my dad would sit at the little kitchen counter in the window and do his designs on napkins,” says his eldest daughter, Bianca, who works for the Nygard corporation. “He always said he would never be done.”

Nygard initially joined the Lyford Cay Property Owners Association (L.C.P.O.A.), even though his lot’s location at the tip of the peninsula meant that it was not deeded within the L.C.P.O.A. After a few years he stopped paying dues. “When you join or go into somebody else’s house or the land, you need to obey their own rules; you need to conform to whatever their standards are,” Nygard says. “I have my own life, you know? I never moved here to Nygard Cay because of Lyford Cay. I moved to Nygard Cay because it’s the most beautiful property in the world, and it happened to be that to get to it I had to go through Lyford Cay.”

The Lyford Cay Club—a golf-and-tennis facility with a majestically frayed pink clubhouse—is the social hub of the community, and according to members, Nygard was discouraged from applying by people who broached the matter on his behalf with the membership committee. “There is a formal process to get into Lyford,” says Chris Brady, a lifelong member. (Brady’s father, Nicholas Brady, was secretary of the Treasury under President George H. W. Bush.) “And it helps if you buy an expensive piece of land and you keep your bad behavior on the down low. But Nygard got off to a bad start.” Nygard says he never tried to join the club, and also denies being a bully, adding, “Most of my relationships with the Lyford Cay community were pristine until Louis Bacon came and destroyed many of them. Many from Lyford Cay would celebrate their weddings, anniversaries, and other special events at Nygard Cay, or bring their V.I.P. guests over, including royalty from around the world.”

Yet, Laughlin says, “When somebody comes in who’s of a different character and doesn’t make much of an effort to assimilate, some communities are better able to deal with that than others. At Lyford, there isn’t a mechanism to deal with that kind of ostentatiousness. A lot of us in the old line viewed him as a curiosity. It’s not in keeping with what we do here, but people went out there to look at it. I’m one of them.”

So was the first President Bush, who struck up a friendship with Nygard after Nicholas Brady took him to Nygard Cay once to marvel at the place. For better or worse, says Bill Hunter, a former Lyford Cay Club chairman, “when you look toward Nygard’s place at night from across the bay, it’s like a cruise ship, all the lights and torches blazing. And around it, the adjacent properties are dark.”

“From time to time I see the procession of people coming to his parties—motorcades full of these attractive girls,” says Jean-Charles de Ravenel. “They’re not parties the typical Lyford Cay family is having with their grandchildren. Listen, Lyford Cay is not St. Tropez.”

Nygard’s supporters say his parties do stand out, because they’re full of people who wouldn’t otherwise be in Lyford Cay. “He has poor kids and athletes out to his house every day,” says his best friend, Carlos Mackey, who is the host of a sports program on local TV. “He’s a philosopher, a visionary, a genius. But his heart’s as big as Shamu the whale.” Nygard is well known throughout the Bahamas for his financial support of the country’s Olympic running squads, among many other charities. Wendall Jones, the publisher of The Bahama Journal, says, “The residents of Lyford Cay say they don’t appreciate his flamboyance when what they don’t like is the fact that he invites so many black people over. Peter Nygard is a force for good.”

Bacon arrived next door at Point House in 1994. He paid $5.9 million, then over the next 15 years purchased two adjoining pieces of land for an additional $20 million. “They did of course warn me about my neighbor, but that’s probably why the price was right,” Bacon says. “He was a bit of a headache, but it was largely cordial at first.” Nygard says he and Bacon—an odd couple if ever there was one—invited each other for drinks at their homes. They managed an agreement (via their groundskeepers) on choices of island ficus and bougainvillea to plant along the easement.

“I helped to save his life,” Nygard says of the time Bacon and his property manager got marooned during a fishing expedition. “I had some of my boats out there. I was part of his search committee.” Bacon relates the same incident, though he says that Nygard was most ungallant. “My wife called him, and he came over to our house. He started casing the joint, looking at it as a place to buy, and did nothing. They ended up getting somebody else to come find us.” (Nygard says that Bacon’s then wife was “most appreciative” and that he has “never been interested” in Bacon’s house.)

An aerial view of the western tip of New Providence, 2014.

In 2005, Nygard addressed his parking-overflow problem by laying down a 15-by-20-foot concrete slab—on Bacon’s side of the property line. Bacon responded by suing Nygard and obtaining a court injunction to remove it. Two years later, Bacon dealt with his long-standing irritation with the noise from Nygard’s parties by installing industrial-grade speakers at the edge of his land and pointing them at Nygard Cay at night. “We hired a sound consultant in the U.K. to see if we could somehow muffle the sound from Nygard’s by emitting a counter-sound, but that proved terribly complicated, so we went and got four huge rock-concert speakers to play something loud in response,” Bacon’s architect, Peter Talty, says.

“It was horrible squawking sounds that would drive you out of your mind,” says Eric Gibson, Nygard’s former property manager. In a legal filing, Nygard’s lawyer characterized them as “military-grade speakers” that “blared dangerous, pain-inducing sound waves toward Mr. Nygard’s home.”

“It was supposed to create white noise on my side, but that didn’t work,” Bacon says. “What it did to his side I wasn’t really interested in.”

There was also the matter of sand. “Nygard was dredging, moving inordinate quantities of sand to increase the size of his property,” says Fred Smith, one of Bacon’s lawyers. “It had been going on for years, but in 2009, around the time the fire burned down his house, it really got out of control. He had a suction dredge on a floating platform, to move sand onshore, going day and night.” Some worried that in rebuilding Nygard Cay he would try to obtain permission to turn the property into a commercial resort or a stem-cell research facility. (For a while, he advertised it as a rental for $294,000 a week.) Nygard had mentioned in a letter to the prime minister that a stem-cell center on the island could provide employment for hundreds of Bahamians, but insists that he had no intention of building it at Nygard Cay.

Meanwhile, Lyford residents and the L.C.P.O.A. had been lodging complaints with the government for years, even compiling aerial photographs that documented the expanding dimensions of Nygard’s coastline thanks to a series of underwater, sand-collecting barriers—called groins—that jut out from the shoreline. In the time since Nygard began living there, his piece of land has grown from 3.25 acres to 6.1 acres.

Bahamian environmentalists employed by Save the Bays, an organization that Bacon and several other Lyford residents would later set up chiefly to combat Nygard, cite significant damage to the coastline—84,000 square meters of the seafloor that Nygard’s dredging gambit destroyed, according to one study. “It’s impossible for natural accretion to build a beach this size on a point,” Romi Ferreira, a local ecologist and an attorney for the group, says, noting that Nygard’s southern flank—on the bay side—constitutes an especially egregious addendum. Nygard says the accretion to his acreage was brought about by “a severe change in ocean currents” in the 1990s, and points to a study he commissioned that concluded his dredging had little impact on the coastline.

Years earlier, Nygard had obtained a government permit to redirect the sand. “The man has a multi-million-dollar yacht, and his marina was silted up,” his lawyer in Nassau, Keod Smith, says. “Does Peter like the fact that his beach got bigger? Of course he does. But that wasn’t why he did it.” But in 2010, Nygard received distressing news from the prime minister’s office. In a letter dated July 21, he was called out for the accumulation of land that came via his “strategic” renovation and was ordered to not only remove the structures he’d built on the Crown land—his marina, lagoon, barbecue pit, and volleyball court—but also “reinstate” the coastline. It would mean returning all that sand to the Bahamas’ rightful seabed, shrinking his property back down to its original dimensions.

Battle Is Joined

That’s when Nygard got mad. He sued the government. He took steps to sue the Lyford Cay Property Owners Association. He sued Bacon over the re-grading project that had created the puddle in the driveway three years earlier and demanded that his neighbor install a security gate where the driveway crosses the property line. Nygard dispatched workers in the middle of the night to remove the non-locking cast-iron gates from the entrance to Bacon’s property, to rip up four sets of speed bumps on the portion of the driveway that cut through Bacon’s land, and to cover the NO TURNAROUND: PRIVATE PROPERTY warning that was painted on the shared road, replacing it with the words NYGARD CAY. Right in Bacon’s front yard!

Nygard is convinced that Bacon “orchestrated” all his problems with Lyford Cay and the government. He adds that all the land he’s been mandated to return to the Bahamas had been unofficially leased to him. “They approved it by letter and after a while it sort of grandfathers itself in,” he says.

He also blamed Bacon for an unflattering documentary that ran on the Canadian TV series The Fifth Estate in 2010, titled Peter Nygard: Larger than Life. Nygard has filed multiple lawsuits, and the CBC has removed the piece from the Internet. In court documents, Nygard called the reporting false and asserted that the most damning accusers had been paid off by Bacon, who calls Nygard’s suspicions “baseless.”

In the summer of 2010, 11 armed Bahamian police officers conducted a raid on Point House, during which Bacon’s staff were searched and interrogated and his possessions—including pictures of his children—were photographed. “They searched the house for guns; there weren’t any,” Ian Levy, Bacon’s property manager, says. “They confiscated the speakers. The policemen didn’t wear nametags.” Bacon was mortified and says the chief of police told him that the sergeant in charge of the raid had acted without authorization “and that Nygard had put him up to it.” Nygard says that he and his guests had merely called the police because, that week, they were “exposed to intolerable screeching” from Bacon’s speakers. Soon afterward, Bacon pulled his three youngest children out of school in Lyford Cay and requested that the 70-person offshore advisement desk that handles his client records be moved out of the Bahamas. “It wasn’t vengeance,” he says. “I had to move the business as a fiduciary. People were worried about the security of our investors’ information.”

Nygard kept going. People he employed posted an elaborate series of YouTube videos and launched fake news Web sites—with names such as Bahamas Citizen and Bahamas National—devoted to ruining Bacon’s name. They featured unsubstantiated assertions that Bacon ran an international drug-smuggling operation, was a member of the K.K.K., had been charged in “one of the biggest Wall Street insider trading cases ever” (a CBS News clip on Raj Gupta’s infamous case had been altered, with Bacon’s name spliced in to replace Gupta’s), and was involved in murdering the Point House caretaker, Dan Tuckfield (who had died of a heart attack in the estate’s hot tub), after commissioning him to set the fire at Nygard Cay. Other postings accused Bacon of taking credit for the efforts of local activists when he accepted the Audubon Medal for preserving Clifton Bay in 2013, and called his acceptance speech, which jokingly cited Gone with the Wind, racist. Nygard doesn’t deny his participation in the campaign. “It’s not actually my product in terms of my invention,” he says, giving credit to his lawyer Keod Smith, an activist who has served in the Bahamian parliament. “But I agree with it.” Has he bankrolled it? “I might have done that. I’ve been very supportive.” Besides, he’s not afraid of a $100 million defamation suit because, “as I understand it, the biggest award ever given in New York is for one million,” he says.

Nygard and one of the outsize lion heads at Nygard Cay, 2015.

Smith, who organized a parade where many participants wore K.K.K. hoods and carried anti-Bacon signs, said he came up with the idea after he noticed, “on some New York library or historical-society Web site,” that someone with the same name as Bacon’s mother mentioned that her grandfather had been a Klan leader in North Carolina. “He has never denounced his great-grandfather,” Smith says.

The Klan characterizations were especially incendiary because of the Bahamas’ history as a hub of the American slave trade. Bacon says the description of his great-grandfather as a Klansman was news to him, and adds that all his life he’d been taught instead about one ancestor, a Colonel Roger Moore, who stood down an angry mob to protect black prisoners from being lynched during the Wilmington, North Carolina, race riot of 1898. Another ancestor, Bartholomew Moore, was a lawyer who argued in a landmark case that slaves had the legal right to protect themselves from a violent master. “What Nygard has accused me of is beyond the pale,” Bacon says. “These things can’t go unanswered. He’s gone to a black nation that has pretty decent race relations and tried to stir up this racial thing by staging a Klan rally.” Nygard says his involvement in the Klan accusations stemmed from “a grassroots movement” in which “locals came to me and asked for my help.”

A key component of Bacon’s defamation suit, which his attorney, Orin Snyder, vows will have its day before a jury, is a 1,000-hour cache of footage shot by Nygard’s personal videographer, Stephen Feralio. Snyder secured the man’s testimony and has sought access to the recordings, which he claims show Nygard’s involvement in the harassment campaign—instructing employees on what he wants their YouTube spots to contain, for instance—as well as “Peter Nygard’s meetings and interactions with Bahamian officials regarding construction at Nygard Cay, and Mr. Nygard’s donation of money to Bahamian politicians,” according to Feralio’s attorney.

Nygard says that he has not seen the footage and that his lawyers dispute this account. Nevertheless, he has fought to have the footage ruled inadmissible. Earlier this year, he enlisted the help of Sitrick and Company, a Los Angeles P.R. and crisis-response firm that, in addition to many less controversial clients, has represented the Church of Scientology and Jeffrey Epstein, the New York financier imprisoned in 2008 for soliciting under-age prostitutes. Nygard’s response to the defamation suit against him—on full display in his legal counterclaim—has been to double down and peddle more unverifiable and scandalous stories about Bacon. In July, the judge assigned to the case issued a ruling limiting Bacon’s complaints to alleged smears that were published in mid-January 2014 or later—leaving him with 30 of the original 135 claims against Nygard. Then, in October, the judge dismissed Nygard’s counterclaim against Bacon, writing that it constituted merely an attempt at retaliation, which is prohibited by the courts. Nygard says he plans to appeal.

It may be that the only thing Bacon and Nygard have in common, besides a Lyford Cay address, is their joint refusal to ever back down. They are like the North-Going Zax and the South-Going Zax in the Dr. Seuss tale, who will not budge, not ever, not one inch.

No Surrender

Nygard says he wants Bacon to leave Lyford Cay: “I think, at this point, it would be better if he did.” He would consider nothing less a satisfactory end to their grudge match.

In August 2010, just after the police raid, Nygard wrote to Bacon in an e-mail, “Louis—Are you sure its worth it to escalate this Bahamas scrimmage? … we used to be friends—what happened? … If you have any problems, any concerns, any annoyances—just ask me direct— I’m sure we can work them out amicably.”

To which Bacon replied, “You are the one with the various lawsuits against me … Peter, so I find this quizzical…. I am putting my holiday property on the market as it was intended for relaxation and enjoyment—it has become anything but thanks to you. To the extent you have used me as a straw man in your fights, you will need to find someone else now.” In another e-mail Bacon offered to sell it to him at a discount, below the asking price of $35 million. “I will save something on the broker’s commission … and you are the most interested party. Although I do not think it is right you should be the one buying it as you are the reason I am selling, so be it.”

But Nygard—who has estimated that he spends a good 5 percent of his day battling Bacon—wasn’t interested. He ignored Bacon’s offer and soon hit him with another lawsuit, and the Internet campaign against him was launched. “He didn’t want me to leave,” Bacon says, meaning that, thanks to being freighted with a ton of neighborly litigation, Point House is essentially unsellable.

And the issue of the runoff on the driveway? That was settled two years ago, a rare moment of détente that could have opened the way to broader peace talks. “It just screamed ‘resolution,’ ” one of their lawyers says. But no.

“He probably enjoys this,” Bacon says. “It’s blood sport to him.” He acknowledges that he feels something similar, with no intention of raising the white flag. “It gives you a certain sense of purpose that, I guess, girds you to continue. Even as it’s distasteful.” Nygard believes Bacon “has a nasty habit of accusing other people of what he is guilty of himself.”

Bacon says Nygard Cay is nothing more than “eye pollution.”

Nygard insists that his place was “the Eighth Wonder of the World” until Bacon ruined it.

Eric Konigsberg

Recommended

Inside louis bacon’s mysterious $500m private island in the hamptons.

You’ve probably never heard of Robins Island, a teardrop-shaped islet half the size of Central Park in the Great Peconic Bay on the East End of Long Island. But it may very well be the most valuable private estate in all of the Hamptons — and the most untouchable.

Sandwiched midway between the North and South forks, Robins Island is roughly 435 acres with miles and miles of waterfront.

For comparison, a 42-acre compound, less than one-tenth the size of Robins Island, with far less waterfront, sold in Southampton this spring for close to $145 million.

“If it were just raw land, I’d guess Robins Island would be worth about a $100 million,” Corcoran’s Susan Breitenbach guessed, noting that she has never visited the island. “But depending on what’s out there in terms of infrastructure, it might be worth from $200 million to $500 million.”

Satellite images reveal two large estate homes on the island, what appears to be a caretaker’s home, a tennis court, a dock and thick woodlands. Boats to the island depart from the North Sea Harbor in Southampton.

But the very fact that area brokers, who make it their business to know the ins and outs of the Hamptons’ best estates, are foggy on its structures and amenities illustrates just how thick the veil of mystery is surrounding Robins Island.

Asked by The Post about the island, both the Sag Harbor harbormaster and a village policeman shrugged.

North Haven’s John Diat, 59, said that the waters around Robins are famed for their fishing but he’s less certain about what might happen on the island itself. The retired media executive added that he’s heard about well-attended bird hunts on the island. “I heard that Jimmy Buffett was shooting there in November,” he said.

A sailor in Montauk — dressed in a dark tan safari vest and trucker’s cap emblazoned with the word “CASH” — added that he has heard urban legends about Robins Island.

I don’t know if there’s any substance to it, but I was told Captain Kidd buried treasure there. Anonymous sailor

“I don’t know if there’s any substance to it, but I was told Captain Kidd buried treasure there,” the sailor, who asked to remain anonymous, said.

“That’s totally true,” said Cutchogue resident Tonya Witczak, 46. “The owner just won’t let you over there to search for it.”

That mystery “owner” is 64-year-old billionaire financier Louis Bacon, who purchased Robins Island in bankruptcy court in 1993 for a mere $11 million.

Born to wealthy family in North Carolina, Bacon made his bones on Wall Street as an investor and hedge fund manager, starting Moore Global Investments in 1990 with $25,000 of family money and turning it in to one of the most lucrative hedge funds ever. But while most masters of the universe tend to take an interest in Hamptons real estate once they’ve made their fortune, Bacon’s interest in Robins Island started back in his college days, when he worked on a charter fishing boat out of Montauk and regularly sailed past the island.

At that time the island’s ownership was under dispute — it had been under dispute since the Revolutionary War, when it was seized from its Loyalist owner, Parker Wickham, by Patriot members of the Culper Spy Ring.

Nearly 200 years later, in 1979 it was sold for $1.3 million to German investors who tried to unsuccessfully flip it to everyone from Moroccan royalty to Donald Trump.

In the late 1980s, Suffolk County nearly purchased it to help preserve the land — which was one of the last largely undeveloped areas on the East End — but politics got in the way of a deal.

Around the same time in 1989, Wickham’s descendants sued to regain control of the island, which they claimed had been stolen from their family. Those disputes allowed Bacon to swoop in to buy Robins Island on the cheap.

But unlike his peers, who have built out-of-scale, Bond villain-esque lairs in the Hamptons, South Florida, Beverly Hills or Aspen, Bacon gave his fortress of solitude to the birds.

In 1997, Bacon granted a conservation easement for most of the island to the Virginia-based global environmental organization the Nature Conservancy, making Robins Island a protected wilderness area.

More recently, the property was transferred to a family trust intended to forever prevent further development.

It’s not the first time Bacon has preserved insanely valuable real estate. According to the Moore Charitable Foundation’s website, the conservation philanthropist has “protected more than 214,000 acres of land in perpetuity across the United States,” including granting conservation easements in his home state of North Carolina (to protect the Cape Fear river watershed), Wyoming and Colorado. His Colorado donation of 167,000 acres on the Trinchera Blanca Ranch to the US Fish and Wildlife Service was the largest it ever received.

But not all of Bacon’s land deals work out quite so well.

He is best known perhaps for his mansion at the exclusive gated community of Lyford Cay in the Bahamas, where he had a vicious, long running and very public feud with neighbor and disgraced fashion mogul Peter Nygård .

For more than a decade the men battled in courts from London to Los Angeles, exchanging lawsuits over development rights and defamation suits, including accusations of drug trafficking, character assassination and even a soupçon of murder.

The latter-day Hatfields and McCoys never did mend their faces, although in the end Bacon’s foundation is famed in the Bahamas for its work conserving the oceanic white-tip shark, while Nygård’s NYC headquarters were raided last year by the FBI before he was formally charged with sex trafficking.

Today, Robins Island provides a safe haven for threatened local shorebirds, including terns, piping plovers, sandpipers and oystercatchers. Ospreys flourish and at least one pair of bald eagles are known to have mated on the island, while animals (the eastern mud turtle) and plants (seabeach knotweed) otherwise endangered can be seen thriving in the restored environment on Robins Island.

Full-grown oak trees have been replanted to replace ones previously harvested, grasses not native to the area have been removed and the herds of deer once overrunning the island have been culled.

While neither the notoriously press-shy Bacon nor his philanthropic Moore Charitable Foundation would comment to The Post, a spokesman did make clear that regular hunting parties and celebrity sightings on Robins Island were no more than idle gossip. The official word about Buffett, for instance, is that no one knows anything about the king of the Parrotheads ever dropping by for a friendly visit. Buffett’s representatives did not reply to requests for comment.

As for the real estate value of Robins Island — even in a Hamptons market that is “out of control” with “almost nothing available,” according to Breitenbach — neither Bacon nor his heirs will ever be able to cash in via development.

But don’t worry too much about Bacon: he still has Captain Kidd’s treasure to fall back on.

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The Private World of Lyford Cay

The exclusive Bahamas compound—a favorite of billionaires and playboys—has been thrust into the spotlight by a a decades-long feud between neighbors Peter Nygard and Louis Bacon. Despite the attention, it remains a very private retreat. A few years ago, Town & Country got a rare, behind-the scenes tour of the elegant club from designer Tom Scheerer.

While it can be said that the superrich live and die by the adage, "Good fences make good neighbors" (or in the case of Donald Trump—walls), the high net-worth residents of Lyford Cay, located on the western tip of New Providence, Bahamas, are known more for their old wasp mores and unlocked doors. The compound even has a communal club with a pink tented dining pavilion that's like something out of a Slim Aarons photo. (He actually shot the club in 1975 for T&C ). Since its founding in 1966 by the Canadian brewery tycoon E.P. Taylor, Lyford's members, including a smattering of Greek shipping heirs, Henry Ford II, the Aga Khan, the Paleys, the Bacardis, and Sean Connery, have fiercely guarded their privacy, even in the social media age.

Recently, in an open letter to the Bahamas Tribune , Bacon accused Nygard of attempting to unseat the Bahamian government and prime minister. Suffice it to say, the island—as well as the Daily Mail— hasn't seen this much intrigue since Blackbeard and Calico Jack. If this isn't enough scandal, Bloomberg reported earlier today that Bacon's charitable foundation was a victim of Wall Street banker Andrew Caspersen's $25 million investment scam.

In 2011, Town & Country was again granted unfettered, exclusive access to photograph the Lyford Cay Club, after a seven-year overhaul by Scheerer. Here's a look at what a billion buys you—that is, if you can play nice.

The drawing room.

The painted palms are nearly 20 feet tall.

The entrance hall.

Pickled "cypress" wallpaper, a dramatic corner mirror, and a fig leaf sofa.

Guest suites.

Where guests of members stay.

A sign by the main bar.

" Lyford, to me, is all about pink. I think it stems from all the old colonial buildings downtown," said Scheerer.

The pool dining area.

This is a favorite place for breakfast.

The bar in the Little Club.

The heart of Lyford life, the Little Club is one of two restaurants where dinner is served. Dancing follows under the pink and white tent.

No cell phones allowed.

Mobile devices are prohibited in common areas. This land line survives in the entrance hall.

A seating area in the Yacht club.

Scheerer had white-painted tole palm fronds made for the space. They do everything but rustle.

A guest room.

The club has its own lodgings, also newly refurbished. Only members and their guests may stay here.

A finial atop the Little Club.

Pineapples are another theme of the redecoration.

The Cabana Bar.

More pineapples, this time above the Cabana Bar.

The loggia.

An evening at Lyford often begins with meeting friends on the loggia at the Little Club.

Pink, tents—are you seeing a theme?

Always look up: another tent, this time in the Cabana Bar. The painting is in the style of Orville Bulman.

The Yacht Club.

What could be more appropriate than tavern chairs and blue and black striped linoleum in the Yacht Club?

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20 Things You Didn’t Know About Louis Moore Bacon

Louis Moore Bacon is a hedge fund manager and philanthropist. He is the founder of Moore Capital Management LLC and Moore Global Investments. The former was founded in 1989, and the latter in 1990. He is known for his business prowess, his charitable works, and his wealth. Although he is very well-known in business circles , there are many things that people do not know about this businessman. Here are 20 interesting facts that you probably didn’t know about Louis Moore Bacon.

1. He is from Raleigh in North Carolina

Bacon was born in Raleigh, North Carolina, on July 25, 1956. His father is Zachary Bacon Jr., who founded Bacon & Co., a real estate company. His father also led the real estate efforts of both Prudential Financial and Merrill Lynch in North Carolina. Bacon has a brother called Zach, and he attended Episcopal High School in Alexandria, Virginia.

2. Louis Moore Bacon Has an MBA

Originally, Bacon had not intended to have a career that related to finance, investment or trading. Therefore, he opted to study for a BA in American literature at Middlebury College in Vermont, and he graduated in 1979. After graduating, he was working on a fishing boat on Long Island when he met Walter Frank, who gave him a summer job working at his company as a clerk. This got him interested in trading and led to him completing his Master’s in Business Administration at Columbia Business School, and he graduated in 1981.

3. Bacon Started Trading While at Business School

While studying at Columbia Business School, Bacon took out a small loan so that he could begin trading. He placed bets on sugar, gold, and cotton interests. Over the first three semesters, he lost money on his investments. This meant that he was forced to borrow money from his parents to pay for his necessities. Eventually, he began to turn a profit during the fourth semester. Thankfully, he learned how to make money faster later in his career.

4. He Enjoys Fishing and Hunting

When he was growing up, he would often go hunting and fishing in the mid-Atlantic region, says Business Insider . This is something that they would do together often whenever his father had some free time. While he was at college, he was the captain of a fishing boat and spent much of his free time deer hunting in the mountains of Vermont. To this day, Bacon still enjoys hunting and fishing.

5. Bacon Learned Trading at Bankers Trust

Bacon entered the sales and trading program at Bankers Trust in 1981. This gave him a good foundation for his future year. After he spent a year at Bankers Trust, he returned to work for Walter Frank’s trading company so that he could learn more about trading currencies. Frank allowed Bacon to trade some of his own money, but this led to Bacon losing the money he had traded. Frank was Bacon’s mentor, but he sadly committed suicide in 1982 after losing his net worth.

6. Bacon Bought Land for Conservation Purposes

One of Bacon’s greatest passions is the conservation of wildlife. This was the reason that he bought Robins Island in 1993. This 435-acre island is located just north of Southampton on Long Island, and he paid $11 million for the land. Five years later, he paid $25 million for the 540-acre Cow Neck Farm in Southampton, New York. He then protected the land from development by giving conservation easements to local organizations. This move also saved him millions of dollars from charitable donations. He occasionally uses Robins Island to host pheasant hunts. In addition to the conservation projects on his own land, he is also involved in the environmental restoration of Lyford Cay in the Bahamas as this is an area of which he is fond.

7. He Has Been Married Twice and Has Seven Children

Louis Moore Bacon has been married twice. His first wife was former Newsweek magazine staff member Cynthia Pigott. They were married from 1986 until they divorced in 2002, and they had four children together. Bacon then married Gabrielle de Heinrich Sacconaghi in Manhattan in 2007. Saccinaghi is an art advisor to buyers from Montreal. They have three children together, which means that Bacon has seven children altogether, so he has plenty to keep him busy when he is not working.

8. Bacon Owns Two Ranches and a Plantation

One of the ways in which Bacon has spent some of his fortune is buying land and properties. In 2007, Louis Moore Bacon paid $175 million for the Trinchera Ranch in Colorado, which had previously belonged to the Forbes family. This was the largest transaction for a single-family home in United States history. The ranch spans 171,400 acres, and it features Colorado’s third-largest peak. Bacon also owns the nearby Blancha ranch. In 2010, he bought the Orton Plantation in North Carolina. This plantation has been built by one of his ancestors in 1735.

9. He Has Two New York Residences

Despite having multiple properties in various locations, Bacon uses New York as his main base. The two reasons for this is that New York is a good location for many of his work activities, and he wants his children to complete their education in the United States. He has two properties in New York, one in New York City and the other in Oyster Bay Cove.

10. Louis Moore Bacon Owns a Ski Resort

The Blake family had owned the Taos Ski Valley since 1954, but they sold the resort to Louis Moore Bacon in 2013. Taos Ski Valley, is a village and alpine ski resort located in Taos County, New Mexico. The village has a tiny population, which was recorded as only 69 in the 2010 census. An interesting fact is that it is one of only four ski resorts in America to have prohibited snowboarding. The resort offers year-round recreation.

11. Bacon Has Owned Properties in the UK and the Bahamas

In the UK, Bacon owns a London property, where he predominantly lived during his first marriage and where he has offices. He also owns a property in Scotland and two private polo grounds in the UK. He formerly owned a luxurious estate in the Bahamas, but he sold this property for $35million in 2011 following serious issues at the property the previous year. In 2010, police found the body of his former house manager in the bot tub on the estate. Although this initially sparked many rumors, it was later revealed that the man had died from coronary artery disease. In the same year, the house had been raided by burglars.

12. He Has Won Awards

Throughout his career, Louis Moore Bacon has won several awards and honors. He was inducted into the Institutional Alpha’s Hedge Fund Manager Hall of Fame in 1008. Others who were inducted at the same time included Leon Levy, Paul Tudor Jones, Bruce Kovner, Alfred Jones, and George Soros . Bacon was then the recipient of the Audubon Medal in 2013. He was awarded this honor in recognition of his outstanding contribution in the field of conservation and environmental protection. Similarly, he was awarded the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership’s Lifetime Conservation Achievement Award in 2016. Bacon received this honor because he had authorized conversation easements on over 210,600 acres of land in the United States.

13. He Has Austrian Citizenship

Although he has never lived in Austria, Louis Moore Bacon has obtained Austrian citizenship, says Money.net. He was given this under a scheme of special treatment to celebrities making notable achievements to Austria. Bacon’s inclusion in this scheme and the fact that he obtained Austrian citizenship was widely criticized. This was because of a lack of availability of specific information regarding the achievement, which led to people doubting the validity of his selection for the honor.

14. Bacon is Paranoid About His Privacy

Despite being well known in business circles, very little is known about Louis Moore Bacon in other circles, and this is not an accident. He has earned a reputation for being one of the most secretive billionaires. He prefers to keep his personal life private, and he is known for controlling exposure. Bacon has even been described as being paranoid about information being leaked. One of his former employees even claims that James Kelly, the former President of Moore’s, once turned up at the office with a private detective in tow. The private detective was carrying a device to sweep the building for bugs. Bacon’s employees all sign confidentiality agreements and are banned from revealing whether he is in town or not.

15. He Was Given One of the Largest Financial Penalties in History

In 2010, Louis Bacon Moore received a $25 million penalty, which was one of the largest financial penalties in the history of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. This was for neglecting to supervise a trader who manipulated palladium and platinum futures. In the same year, his London offices were raided by investigators as they suspected one of the employees, equity-execution trader Julian Rifat, was doing insider trading . Bacon has run into trouble again in 2019. Peter Nygard filed a complaint that Bacon had violated the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. Bacon and Nyard have already had a legal dispute previously. This was a property dispute as the pair had adjoining properties in the Bahamas.

16. Bacon Gets Involved in Politics

Bacon has always been interested in politics, and he is quite open about his alliances. In the past, Bacon has served as a fundraiser for Republican politician Mitt Romney. He also supported Jeb Bush when he was a presidential candidate in 2015 by donating $1 million to a Super PAC. Bacon has even got involved with British politics, as he has a property in the UK and spent some time living in London. He has contributed $250,000 to the British Conservative Party.

17. His Net Worth is $1.5 Billion

According to Forbes, Louis Moore Bacon now has a personal net worth of $1.5 billion. This puts him in the 1511th position on the Forbes list of the world’s richest billionaires. In 2016, he ranked in 374th position on the Forbes 400 and 22nd position on the highest-earning hedge fund managers lists. However, he had dropped off both these lists by 2017.

18. His Charitable Trust was Defrauded

Louis Moore Bacon founded the Moore Charitable Trust, which is focused on environmental preservation, both in the United States and in other locations internationally. This charitable trust was defrauded of $25 million by Andy Casperson, who is a banker that has since been jailed.

19. He is On the Board of Many Organisations

His business experience means that Louis Moore Bacon serves on the board of many organizations. He is on the Board of Trustees for Middlebury College and Columbia Business School, both of which he attended. Bacon is a member of the Leader Council at the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard Kennedy School and a board member of the Foreign Policy Association. He has also become a member of the Board of Trustees for the United States Ski and Snowboard Team Foundation.

20. He is Close Friends with Paul Tudor Jones

Through his brother Zach, Louis Moore Bacon met Paul Tudor Jones in the mid-1980s. Paul Tudor Jones is an investor, hedge fund manager, and philanthropist. He is the founder of Tudor Investment Corporation. Bacon and Jones became close friends and took on the social scene in New York as young bachelors. They were both working as traders, and they both profited form the market crash of 1987. Their friendship has survived the decades since they met, and they still speak several times a week.

Garrett by trade is a personal finance freelance writer and journalist. With over 10 years experience he's covered businesses, CEOs, and investments. However he does like to take on other topics involving some of his personal interests like automobiles, future technologies, and anything else that could change the world.

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Louis bacon: legendary trader.

“Macro, Macro Man”, by Riva Atlas:

Today [Louis] Bacon reigns over not only Moore Capital but over the most visible, most high-octane area of money management–macro investing. He gained the throne by default, and at a time when the future of the realm is increasingly in doubt. After sharp reversals, Julian Robertson in March shut down Tiger Management; in April it was George Soros’ turn to slash the size and scope of his funds. With $9.4 billion under management–and $7.6 billion in macro partnerships–Bacon is by far the biggest of the daredevil managers who are still placing big directional bets on stocks, bonds, currencies and commodities at a time when such bold trading has come under withering scrutiny. But he, too, is struggling this year, and many skeptics wonder whether the days are numbered for this high-wire investing style. Like his bigger, better-known rivals, Bacon has racked up a stunning long-term record. His flagship fund, Moore Global Investments–at $6 billion by far his largest–has returned 31 percent annually after fees since its inception in 1990. Last year the fund was up 26 percent. But Bacon’s hallmark has been consistency: He delivered these returns with low volatility and relatively little correlation to the stock market. From 1995 through 1999, his annual returns ranged from 23 percent to 32 percent (see graph). By contrast, Soros’ flagship Quantum Fund zigzagged between 39 percent and -1.5 percent, while Robertson’s Jaguar Fund whipsawed from 57.2 percent to -18.1 percent. Moore’s funds recorded a Sharpe ratio–which measures risk-adjusted investment returns (the higher the number, the better)–of 1.77, compared with 0.69 for Quantum and 0.45 for Jaguar over those five years. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index logged a 1.54. If you look at Louis’s long-term track record, there is probably no trader alive who has better risk control on an asset base his size, says Paul Tudor Jones, a close friend of Bacon’s who runs Tudor Investment Corp. Jones wrote the book on capital preservation. Leveraging up and chasing any investment opportunity anywhere in the world–for a macro trader to be guilty of style drift, he would have to leave the planet. These swashbuckling bettors captured headlines, investors’ imaginations, and their funds. The most notorious exploit was Soros’ $10 billion bet against the British pound, which earned him the sobriquet of the Man Who Broke the Bank of England. Always volatile, macro trading became increasingly difficult as more players crowded into the arena. A variety of factors, including the development of a single European currency, have eliminated many of the massive global bond and currency trades by which macro traders earned their handsome livings. Since the 1998 blowup of Long-Term Capital Management–technically an arbitrage operation that made huge macro bets–credit for macro traders has been tight. Indeed, even before this year’s woes, many famous players– Michael Steinhardt of Steinhardt Partners and Leon Levy and Jack Nash of Odyssey Partners among them–quit the business. A handful of practitioners remain. Besides Bacon, the most prominent include Jones, Bruce Kovner of Caxton Associates, and Monroe Trout of Trout Trading. Sources in the hedge fund community say that Druckenmiller will be coming off the sidelines in September, to take active control again of his Duquesne Capital Management. For a man of his influence and wealth–perhaps $1 billion of his net worth is said to be tied up in his own hedge funds–Bacon maintains a remarkably low profile. No gala charity benefits à la Paul Tudor Jones, whose annual fundraisers for the Robin Hood Foundation regularly grace newspapers’ society pages; no Sorosian campaigns to urge Eastern European political reforms or the legalization of marijuana for medicinal purposes. Bacon’s incessant trading generates huge commissions, but not many on Wall Street know what he looks like. (Six feet tall, he sports a beard that comes and goes at whim.) As with life, so with trading: Few know what Bacon is doing at any given time, and he prefers it that way. At a time when hedge fund performance data is freely available on the Internet, Bacon tries to keep his results secret and is even wary of having historical returns for his funds published. Bacon grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina, and counts among his ancestors Nathaniel Bacon, a rogue colonist who, in 1676, launched an unauthorized attack on Indians that briefly led to his controlling most of Virginia. Bacon’s father, Zachary Bacon Jr., ran the North Carolina real estate operations of both Prudential and later Merrill Lynch & Co. Bacon’s mother died in 1983. When his father eventually remarried, it was to the sister of a man who was fast becoming a Wall Street legend: Julian Robertson . Bacon is the middle of three sons. His brothers, Zachary III and Bart, graduated from local public schools, but Louis, in his junior year, ventured out of town to Alexandria, Virginia, enrolling in preppy Episcopal High School, by coincidence Robertson’s alma mater. Students at Episcopal were expected to work hard and had to sit in study hall during free periods and evenings. Only in the afternoon did they get a few hours outdoors, to play football or other sports. Bacon didn’t seem to mind. One afternoon I passed through study hall, and there was Louis, grinding away, recalls Lee Ainslie Jr., the former Episcopal headmaster and father of Lee Ainslie III , manager of the $4.5 billion Maverick Capital hedge funds. Most other boys would have been happy to be outdoors playing. For college, Bacon traveled north to Middlebury College, where he majored in American literature. A favorite professor, Horace Beck, says he saw no signs of the budding financial genius. I tried to get him interested in folklore, he recalls. But really, I had no idea what he was going to do. An aficionado of Ernest Hemingway and Nathaniel Hawthorne, Bacon cultivated his love of the outdoors in the bucolic surroundings of Vermont. Southerners at Middlebury stuck out like sore thumbs, recalls classmate Christopher Brady, who heads money management and advisory firm Chart Group and is the son of former Treasury secretary Nicholas Brady. He hunted a lot, skiied incessantly and studied. Still, there were some early signs of the future financier: During the summers following his sophomore and junior years, Bacon worked as a clerk for New York Stock Exchange specialist Walter N. Frank & Co. The enterprising Bacon met Frank after working on his deep-sea charter fishing boat off Montauk, Long Island, during the summer of 1976. From college, Bacon headed to Wall Street, landing a job as a clerk on the New York Coffee, Cocoa and Sugar exchanges. A lot of the great traders on Wall Street are from the South, and many got their start in commodities, explains Brady. An early influence was Paul Tudor Jones , who was sharing an apartment with Charles Johnson, a former roommate of Zack Bacon’s at the University of North Carolina. Jones, who had started out as a cotton trader, was then working as a commodities broker with E.F. Hutton. Bacon soon headed off to get his MBA at Columbia University, where he used his student loan as capital to continue to trade. To his chagrin, he lost it all–and had to work odd jobs to make up the difference. From this experience, he learned how to handle risk, explains Arpad Busson, who runs London-based EIM Group, a firm specializing in alternative asset management and fundraising and whose clients have had money with Bacon since 1990. Bacon landed at Shearson Lehman Hutton in 1983 as a futures broker, trading on behalf of some of the biggest names in the hedge fund world. For a 27-year-old, Bacon deployed a powerful Rolodex. Jones and brother Zack, who deployed landed at Soros Fund Management as head trader, threw plenty of business Bacon’s way. He quickly became a top commission producer. Louis was very fortunate to be right in the middle of that network, notes Charles Stockley, president of Stockley Asset Management, a futures trading firm, and a childhood friend of Jones’s. You can’t say that his career is a story of someone starting at the bottom and clawing his way up. But he took the ball and ran with it, and ultimately he surpassed them all. Bacon’s gilt-edged client list had another advantage, in addition to the hefty commissions: By trading on behalf of Soros and Jones, Bacon learned their investing styles. By 1986 Bacon had acquired enough of a reputation to start managing other peoples’ money. The following year, while still at Shearson, he set up a small fund called Remington Investment Strategies (it remains part of the Moore Capital family). Right off he hit a home run. He correctly anticipated the stock market crash, going short S&P futures and then shifting to a long position just as the market bottomed. By the end of the decade, Bacon had established a strong track record, and he decided to move to a bigger stage. When he set up Moore Capital in 1989 (the firm bears his mother’s maiden name), he already had more than $100 million under management. He quickly raised $1.8 million more for an offshore fund, Moore Global Investments, which is today Bacon’s biggest portfolio. Much of the sum came from Antoine Bernheim, whose Dome Capital Management invests in hedge funds on behalf of European investors. The key thing about Louis is his ability to analyze and process information quickly, while controlling risk, enthuses Bernheim. That is the essence of a talented hedge fund manager. The early investors were quickly rewarded: That first year, Moore Global was up 86 percent, thanks largely to Bacon’s decision to short the Nikkei index just before the Japanese markets collapsed. He also anticipated Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait and went short stocks and long oil. As Bacon set out to raise more money, his task was made easier by his friendship with Jones, who had decided to close his funds to new money. In a letter to investors, Jones recommended they invest spare capital with Moore. Jones also introduced Bacon to Busson, who had helped him raise money in Europe. By the end of 1990, Bacon had $200 million under management and was up a healthy 29 percent. Bacon soon began refining his trading style. Though he studies charts and diagrams, he relies on an obsessive attention to detail–and ultimately instinct. He is like an animal in his ability to sense the market, says one longtime investor. Like any good macro trader, Bacon strives to identify long-running trends, or investment themes, such as euro convergence or structural interest rate moves. But unlike many others, Bacon can have an itchy trigger finger, and he will sometimes trade in and out and around his positions, even if they’re moving in the predicted direction. If Louis thinks something is going from 70 to 100, he’ll trade in and out 15 times before it gets there, where we would get in and hang on as it went up and down, says one trader at a rival hedge fund. Even today, with some 230 employees, Bacon keeps a firm hand on the tiller. Very few people at the firm are allowed to take serious risk, says one source. There’s a lot of people there, but they are mostly in support, research or administrative positions. Still, Bacon is capable of holding positions when he thinks they have potential: A source close to Moore notes that the firm maintained a stake in European bonds, particularly Swedish and Italian securities, from 1995 to 1999. But typically, if an investment seems to be moving against him, Bacon will get out quickly. If a stock goes from 100 to 90, an investor who looks at fundamentals will think maybe it’s a better buy, explains one source. But with Louis, he will figure he must have been wrong about something and get out. Contrast that, say, with Robertson, who, even after shutting down his firm, was doggedly holding on to massive positions in such stocks as US Airways Group and United Asset Management Corp. The difference between Louis and Julian is, Julian sees the mountain from afar and doesn’t worry about the valley. Louis has a long-term macroeconomic vision on every position, but he won’t let that stand in the way of making money over the next five minutes, says one former employee. Bacon’s risk habits were formed in the futures arena. Interestingly, many of the macro funds that have disbanded or scaled back following losses–Steinhardt Partners, Odyssey Partners, Soros Fund Management and Tiger Management – were led by stock pickers. Meanwhile, most of the surviving macro players–Bacon, Jones, Kovner and Trout – come from the futures business. The only people who survive in the futures world are those who understand and can manage risk, explains hedge fund consultant Hunt Taylor. That’s because the leverage is so high. Agreed Bacon in a recent investor letter: Those traders with a futures background are more ‘sensitive’ to market action, whereas value-based equity traders are trained to react less to the market and focus much more on their assessment of a company’s or situation’s viability.

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Billionaire Louis Bacon battles to protect his ranch from big utilities’ solar-power plans

One side of the environmental clash paints the 54-year-old hedge-fund-managing land baron and conservationist as a natural-resource champion protecting one of the state’s last unspoiled ranches. The other sees a deep-pocketed NIMBY guarding his own private Eden and thwarting Colorado’s pioneering push for statewide solar energy.

Bacon’s goal is to stop Xcel Energy and Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association from running solar-transmission lines across his 171,400-acre Trinchera Ranch, home to the state’s third-highest peak, Mount Blanca. He calls the peak and its surroundings a “state and national treasure.”

“Having helped many others in their fights against outside, profit-oriented polluters, I couldn’t shirk this battle when I know there is so much at stake for the San Luis Valley residents, the range, the environment, the animals and for all of Colorado,” he said in an e-mail interview with The Denver Post.

The transmission project, however, is supported by Western Resource Advocates, a Boulder-based environmental law and policy group.

Three of the valley’s county commissions — Ala mosa, Saguache and Rio Grande — also have voiced support for the line, which they see as helping to ensure electricity reliability and promoting economic development.

The utilities argue that the long-planned transmission lines not only meet requirements of new clean-energy legislation but provide a loop system that protects the flow of power to the San Luis Valley.

Initial hopes to have the line ready by 2013 are now stalled by at least several years, in large part because of Bacon’s effort to push the $180 million project into more intensive environmental review.

“The losers here are the people of Colorado who have clearly expressed their desire for us to develop solar potential,” said Xcel spokesman Mark Stutz.

Utility companies rarely lose fights for transmission upgrades, which many view as an essential step toward providing alternative energy. But utility companies seldom confront deep-pocketed conservation stalwarts like Bacon.

“He’s never scared of a fistfight,” said environmentalist Robert Kennedy Jr., whose Waterkeeper Alliance has tapped Bacon’s bounty for protracted legal fights against industrial hog farms in North Carolina and a coral-reef-threatening development plan in the Bahamas. “He is our single largest supporter. He’s one of the few supporters out there who are willing to fund litigation and fight long term.”

Conservation ethic began in boyhood

Bacon’s conservation ethic traces back to his boyhood in North Carolina. Born in 1956 in Raleigh, Bacon grew up hunting and fishing. While studying American literature at Vermont’s Middlebury College, he spent spare time stalking deer in the Green Mountains.

“I realized then that an upbringing as a young sportsman was differentiating,” he said.

Today, the twice-married father of six is an accomplished skier and bow hunter with a yen for bull elk. He visits Trinchera every season, and even though he finds plenty of elk, he’s missed his trophy the past four years. He also skis at the ranch, hiking and using snowmobiles to access backcountry runs spilling from Trinchera’s three fourteeners, Lindsey, Blanca and Little Bear.

Bacon’s grandfather Louis T. Moore was an early environmental champion who earned the nickname “Bully” for his fight to protect the regal trees from road development in southeastern North Carolina in the early 1900s. Nonetheless, many of his efforts failed, and those treeless tracts in his grandfather’s hometown of Wilmington, N.C., resonate with Bacon.

“It reminds me that partial victories are important and that defeats can serve to raise public awareness that some things are greater than any of us as individuals,” he said. “Once they’re gone, we can never get them back.”

Bacon bought Trinchera in 2007 from Malcolm Forbes largely for its undeveloped nature. Forbes, who in 2004 permanently removed development rights on 81,400 acres at Trinchera, sold to Bacon based on his promise to continue the ranch’s environmental legacy, a Forbes spokeswoman said. The $175 million deal marked the highest price ever paid for a single-family home in U.S. history.

Personal fortune put at $1.6 billion

Bacon’s personal fortune is estimated at $1.6 billion by Forbes magazine, which ranks him as the 238th-richest American. He amassed it investing and trading, with a large-bet, large-yield style that revolves around risk management.

His Moore Capital Management today controls some $16 billion in investments spread across several funds and is one of the few remaining players in the world of macro investing, which involves “discretionary traders” using their own intuition and judgment to swiftly move huge amounts of money around in currency, equity, stock and bond markets.

“Everyone calls him the ultimate risk manager,” said Jay, a longtime hedge-fund insider whose Market Folly website tracks more than 40 hedge funds. (He cannot use his last name because of confidentiality agreements with the Dallas financial firm where he works.) “He excels at risk management.”

It’s a lesson Bacon learned early in his career, when a mentor shot himself at age 37 after a bad stock bet. Bacon also lost his student-loan money on bad investments three straight terms while in graduate school at Columbia University.

He rarely makes bad bets anymore. Since starting his firm’s first fund in 1990 with a $25,000 inheritance from his mother, Bacon’s 20-year-old flagship Moore Global Investments fund has climbed from $1,000 a share to more than $42,000, averaging 22 percent returns every year and enduring three negative years. Barron’s ranks the fund at No. 33 among the top 100 hedge funds.

This year, however, is not tracking toward a banner year for Bacon, who in April paid a $25 million fine to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, settling charges that a former portfolio manager manipulated futures prices for platinum and palladium during the final minutes of daily trading in late 2007 and early 2008. The practice is known as “banging the close.”

Through the first quarter of the year, Bacon’s MGI fund was up 2.3 percent. But May, which Hedge Fund Research Inc. called the worst month for hedge funds since November 2008, saw Moore Global Investments plummet 9.2 percent, its worst month ever.

Plantations, palaces and playgrounds

With his money, Bacon has amassed a billionaire’s trophy shelf of plantations, palaces and playgrounds in the Bahamas, North Carolina, New York, Great Britain and Colorado.

Bacon has quashed development potential on his 435-acre Robins Island off New York’s Long Island and the 540-acre Cow Neck Farm near New York’s tony Southampton, where home sites sell for millions.

He also has reaped millions of dollars in tax breaks on his development-shunning properties, many of which host a bounty of wildlife that feeds Bacon’s passion for hunting. Newspapers on Long Island report that Bacon often hosts wealthy pals for “driven” pheasant hunts on Robins Island.

He has tripled conservation spending since buying Trinchera, said ranch manager Ty Ryland, whose father managed the property under Forbes.

Bacon’s 2,385-acre “Sound of Music” ranch on Wilson Mesa above Telluride — which he bought in 2007 for $26 million — also is under an easement that limits development to eight homes. The 20,000-acre Tercio Ranch he bought near Trinidad in 1996 has become, like Trinchera, a national example for progressive fire mitigation and coal-bed methane development.

At Trinchera Ranch, Bacon provides week-long teacher workshops, scholarships for local students, free firewood harvesting and public hunting programs.

The Colorado Division of Wildlife has even used the ranch as an outdoor laboratory.

“Trinchera, under Mr. Bacon, has become an integral part of several of our management plans for several species,” said Jerry Apker, head of the division’s Ranching for Wildlife program.

Still, Apker said Division of Wildlife experts suggest that transmission lines across Trinchera would “not cause any direct significant impact to any species.”

“It’s more aesthetic and visual impact,” he said.

Bacon trying to sway state leaders

Ranch manager Ryland, who has lived on Trinchera since he was a boy and speaks with the valley’s deliberate lilt, frets that the transmission-line fight could aggravate Bacon as similar hassles once did Forbes, who bought the ranch in 1969 for $3 million. When the state denied Forbes’ request in the late 1970s to fence a large portion of Trinchera as a wildlife reserve for trophy hunts — the wildlife of Colorado is public property — he carved 86,000 acres into 12,000 lots.

“Louis Bacon is absolutely the last person I would expect to develop a piece of property, but once you take the heart out of something and someone, you just never know what could happen,” said Ryland as he nudged his new diesel Ford truck up a gated track off U.S. 160 to an overlook on the ranch. “You can never really rule that out. I’ve seen it happen.”

Bacon is working to sway state leadership toward his camp. His team met in the summer with Lt. Gov.-elect Joe Garcia, who declined to comment on those talks. Bacon has given donations to Colorado’s state and national politicians from both parties. He has hired utility attorneys to design alternatives to the route through Trinchera.

Bacon, though, likes to point to local landowners who have rallied behind his well-organized effort as “the real leaders of the protest.”

“When a profit-seeking company proposes to take citizens’ private land away for its own gain, people should stand up for their rights,” he said. “All I did was slow down the utilities’ reckless effort long enough to give other landowners a chance to understand what they were being railroaded into.”

A “Solar Working Group” separate from Bacon’s Trinchera recently formed in the San Luis Valley and is urging, like Bacon, further exploration of alternative corridors.

Still, Bacon is an undeniable force behind the opposition.

He has paid Denver public-relations firm GBSM $100,000 in the past two years to help coordinate his fight against Xcel and Tri-State.

And he’s no stranger to ramping up a fight. Or even a petty squabble.

Last summer, police visiting Bacon’s Lyford Cay palace in the Bahamas found four high-end Meyer Sound speakers that local news reports described as “ultrasonic weaponry” capable of projecting powerful soundwaves across long distances. The speakers, typically used in outdoor arenas, can potentially damage structures and injure people.

The speakers, according to a statement by Bacon’s local attorney, were used to “counterbalance loud music” emanating from boisterous parties at the compound of Bacon’s across-the-cay neighbor, billionaire fashion designer Peter Nygard. Nygard’s attorneys, in a public statement, said the “sound cannons” caused Nygard to suffer “headaches and irregular heartbeats.” (The two billionaire neighbors remain locked in lawsuits over access and easements.)

“The continued escalation of Nygard’s late-night parties and his refusal to abide by Lyford Cay protocols left few options but an effort to return in kind the music that he broadcast,” read the statement from Bacon’s Bahamas attorney Pericles Maillis.

Bacon’s Colorado full-press PR campaign to highlight alternative routes for the transmission line is far reaching. Superstar crooner Sting this summer visited the Denver Art Museum and paused to gaze at a painting of Trinchera’s Mount Blanca, on loan to the museum by Bacon. As if on cue, Sting told a gallery of invited reporters he’d be “very upset if there was a huge system of power lines in front of it.”

“It’s so bizarre to defend ourselves from this big rock-star guy,” said Xcel’s Stutz. “It is unusual for us to deal with a landowner who hires his own PR firm and bevy of lawyers.”

Jason Blevins: 303-954-1374 or [email protected]

Key dates in history of Moore Capital, MGI

A look at Louis Bacon’s Moore Capital Management and the performance of his largest fund, Moore Global Investment. That fund has returned profits of $2 billion over the years.

1990: MGI begins trading. Bets big that Iraq’s Saddam Hussein will invade Kuwait. Fund posts 86 percent gain.

1993: Issues first profit returns of $470 million. Fund up 50 percent.

1994: MGI’s first losing year, down 14 percent when German bond market tanks.

1996: Moore Capital expands both London and New York offices. MGI up 30 percent.

2000: MGI distributes profits of $270 million. Moore Capital launches several new ventures, including Eden Capital, which supports Moore portfolio managers heading out on their own.

2001: Argentina’s default, the Sept. 11 attacks and the Enron scandal pinch investments. Fund up 10 percent.

2003: Investors tell Bacon it’s a “make-or-break year” after a weak three-year performance. Fund up 35 percent.

2004: Bacon issues a profit distribution of $450 million.

2007: Bacon inducted into Futures Hall of Fame.

2008: Federal bailouts “upended our bearish financial plays,” says Bacon, with rescues of Bear Stearns, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. Fund down 4.6 percent.

2009: “Some of the most stressful, white-knuckled days of my trading career,” says Bacon. MGI up 22 percent.

2010: Barron’s ranks Bacon’s MGI fund No. 33 among the top 100 hedge funds.

Source: Louis Bacon newsletter

Jason Blevins, The Denver Post

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Billionaire Building Ultimate Eco-Resort in Panama

By Eddie Montes 

A reclusive hedge fund billionaire with a passion for green causes is putting the finishing touches on an exclusive resort in western Panama.

Islas Secas Reserve and Lodge will have only four casitas and accommodate no more than 18 guests at a time, according to early reports. Described as an example of “sustainable, off-the-grid luxury,” the resort is located on the island of Isla Cavada, one of 14 islands in the Islas Secas archipelago.

The $1,000-per-person-a-night rate will include private marine safaris, snorkeling, scuba diving, fishing private beach picnics, according to media reports. “Guests will experience a true passion for the enjoyment and conservation of the habitat, a deep appreciation and respect for the local culture and its history, and experiences that provide fulfillment on a multitude of levels,” according to the resort’s Web site

The developer is Louis Bacon, a hedge fund manager described as a “billionaire conservationist” by Travel Weekly . Bacon is the founder of Moore Capital Management and has “spent more than two decades supporting efforts to protect natural resources in the United States and abroad ,” according to his bio.

Bacon’s Belvedere Property Management has helped develop New Mexico’s Taos Ski Valley, Trinchera Ranch in Colorado and Tordrillo Mountain Lodge in Alaska, according to Travel Weekly .

Bacon has certainly picked a picturesque spot for this resort. It is located near the Coiba National Park, a 430,000-acre marine reserve off the Pacific coast, which has been designated as a UNESCO World Heritage site.

The resort is expected to open next January.

Image Courtesy: Isla Secas Website 

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Louis Bacon News

Louis Bacon, founder of The Moore Bahamas Foundation, an affiliate of The Moore Charitable Foundation (MCF), pledged $1m for a combination of short-term and long-term hurricane relief and reconstruction following the devastation caused by Hurricane Dorian. #His donations began with funding for emerg Read More

BLANCA — Dead trees raked from the forest floor are piled into fences more than a dozen feet high. Inside the tangled-timber barricades are verdant forests of aspens. On the other side is a barren landscape, where armies of marauding ungulates munch every aspen shoot that pushes through the d Read More

This week Taos Ski Valley became the first ski resort designated a B Corporation. B Corporations are for-profit companies recognized by the nonprofit B Lab that meet “rigorous standards of social and environmental performance, accountability, and transparency.” Long known for its steep and rowdy Read More

Lots of things about the Trinchera Blanca Ranch are big. Sitting on the east side of the San Luis Valley near La Veta Pass, its 176,000 acres are believed to make it the biggest ranch in Colorado. Its owner, hedge fund manager Louis Bacon, ranks among the richest people in the country. And, after de Read More

The British Government is to create a marine reserve only slightly smaller than the UK in the waters of Ascension Island in the South Atlantic, it has been announced. A grant of £300,000 from the charitable Bacon Foundation will be used to close an area of just over half the island’ Read More

MIDDLEBURY, Vt. — Nearly a century ago, the visionary Vermont environmentalist Joseph Battell bequeathed to Middlebury College the large tract of land that is home to the Bread Loaf campus. Bordering the Green Mountain National Forest and encompassing numerous areas of ecological and natural inter Read More

How does a Wall Street hedge fund guy end up caring so much about conservation that he spends $175 million on a huge chunk of the Southwest — and then basically hands most of it over to the federal government a few years later? (See Wall Street Donors.) Louis Bacon — the  bil Read More

In the main lodge of his Trinchera Blanca ranch in Colorado, Louis Bacon, the founder of the giant hedge fund firm Moore Capital Management, takes in his pristine and wild 172,000-acre tract from a plush leather chair. A ghost herd of animals–the heads of elk, mule deer, bison and bi Read More

Who is Louis Bacon’s wife? Socialite Gabrielle Sacconaghi outshines her hedge fund boss husband

Along the East End of Long Island, investor Louis Bacon has a beautiful property on Robins Island, a teardrop-shaped islet half the size of Central Park in the Great Peconic Bay, news outlets revealed on Wednesday, July 20.

Bacon was recently in the news recently for hurling alleged sexual abuse and trafficking allegations by ten women against his neighbor Peter Nygård . Canadian fashion mogul Nygård said the allegations were the "by-product" of a feud he had with his billionaire neighbor.

'Unseamly: The Investigation of Peter Nygard': Release date, plot, trailer, and all you need to know about Discovery+ documentary

'Unseamly: The Investigation of Peter Nygard': Meet fashion mogul who liked his women 'petite' and 'round ass'

Nygard's camp mounts a defense against the suit saying these were acts by Louis Bacon, the renowned American investor, and hedge fund manager who has a long-standing feud with the Canadian. Discovery+ had even released a series called ' Unseamly: The Investigation of Peter Nygard ', which covered the case. Here's what's to know about the controversial Louis Bacon's wife.

Who is Louis Bacon’s wife?

Louis Moore Bacon married Gabrielle de Heinrich Sacconaghi in Manhattan in 2007, five years after his divorce from his first wife Cynthia Pigott. Sacconaghi is a Canadian socialite and art adviser. In February 2007, the pair married in a civil ceremony in his Manhattan residence. It was Bacon's second marriage. At the couple's residence on Lyford Cay in the Bahamas, the Rev Keith Cartwright, the Episcopal archdeacon of the Turks and Caicos Islands and the Southern Bahamas, held a religious ceremony, the New York Times reported. 

Sacconaghi works as an art buyer's advisor in New York and London. From 1992 until 1999, she worked at Sotheby's in London as a liaison in private client services. She earned a bachelor's degree in international relations from McGill University and a master's degree in international relations from Cambridge University in England.

Cynthia Pigott

Bacon has been married twice. His first wife was Cynthia Pigott, a former Newsweek magazine staff member. Her parents were James Stanley Glanville Pigott of New York and London and the late Corinne Ingraham Pigott. She is also the granddaughter of the late Justice Phoenix Ingraham of the New York State Supreme Court. She and Bacon wedded on the day after Valentine's Day in 1986, in the chapel of St Bartholomew's Episcopal Church in New York, the New York Times reported.

Pigott graduated from Chapin School and Colby College. The bride made her debut in 1976 at the Union Club in New York and the St Nicholas Society Debutante Ball and was a member of the Junior Assembly. She belongs to the Colony Club. Her father is a former Rolls-Royce Motors consultant in New York. The couple divorced after 16 years of being together, in 2002. The divorce bill was allegedly more than a whopping $100 million at the time, according to Forbes . Pigott and Bacon also have four children together. 

Who Owns Which Superyacht? (A Complete Guide)

Have you ever wondered who owns the most luxurious, extravagant, and expensive superyachts? Or how much these lavish vessels are worth? In this complete guide, we’ll explore who owns these magnificent vessels, what amenities they hold, and the cost of these incredible yachts.

We’ll also take a look at some of the most expensive superyachts in the world and the notable people behind them.

Get ready to explore the world of superyachts and the people who own them!

Table of Contents

Short Answer

The ownership of superyachts is generally private, so the exact answer to who owns which superyacht is not always publicly available.

However, there are some notable superyacht owners that are known.

For example, Larry Ellison, the co-founder of Oracle, owns the Rising Sun, which is the 11th largest superyacht in the world.

Other notable owners include Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich and Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen.

Overview of Superyachts

The term superyacht refers to a large, expensive recreational boat that is typically owned by the worlds wealthy elite.

These vessels are designed for luxury cruising and typically range in size from 24 meters to over 150 meters, with some even larger.

Superyachts usually feature extensive amenities and creature comforts, such as swimming pools, outdoor bars, movie theaters, helipads, and spas.

Superyachts can range in price from $30 million to an astonishingly high $400 million.

Like most luxury items, the ownership of a superyacht is a status symbol for those who can afford it.

The list of superyacht owners reads like a whos who of billionaires, with names like Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich, Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.

The most expensive superyacht in the world is owned by the Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani.

While some superyacht owners prefer to keep their vessels out of the public eye, others have made headlines with their extravagant amenities.

Some of the most famous superyachts feature swimming pools, private beaches, helicopter pads, on-board cinemas, and luxurious spas.

In conclusion, owning a superyacht is an exclusive status symbol for the world’s wealthy elite.

These vessels come with hefty price tags that can range from $30 million to over $400 million, and feature some of the most luxurious amenities imaginable.

Notable owners include the Emir of Qatar, Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich, Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.

Who are the Owners of Superyachts?

From Hollywood celebrities to tech billionaires, superyacht owners come from all walks of life.

Many of the most well-known owners are billionaires, including Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich, Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.

Other notable owners include Hollywood stars such as Leonardo DiCaprio and Johnny Depp.

However, not all superyacht owners are wealthy.

Many are everyday people who have worked hard and saved up to purchase their dream vessel.

Other notable billionaire owners include Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, and former US President Donald Trump.

These luxurious vessels come with hefty price tags that can range from $30 million to over $400 million.

For many superyacht owners, their vessels serve as a status symbol of wealth and luxury.

Some owners prefer to keep their yachts out of the public eye, while others have made headlines with their extensive amenities – from swimming pools and helicopter pads to on-board cinemas and spas.

Many of these yachts are designed to the owner’s exact specifications, ensuring that each one is totally unique and reflects the owner’s individual tastes and personality.

Owning a superyacht is an exclusive club, reserved for those with the means and the desire to experience the ultimate in luxury.

Whether they are billionaires or everyday people, superyacht owners are all united in their love of the sea and their appreciation for the finer things in life.

The Most Expensive Superyacht in the World

When it comes to superyachts, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, the Emir of Qatar, certainly knows how to make a statement.

His luxury vessel, the 463-foot Al Mirqab, holds the title of the world’s most expensive superyacht.

Built in 2008 by German shipbuilder Peters Werft, this impressive yacht is complete with 10 luxurious cabins, a conference room, cinema, and all the amenities one would expect from a vessel of this magnitude.

In addition, the Al Mirqab features a helipad, swimming pool, and even an outdoor Jacuzzi.

With a price tag of over $400 million, the Al Mirqab is one of the most expensive yachts in the world.

In addition to the Emir of Qatar, there are several other notable owners of superyachts.

Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich, Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos all own luxurious vessels.

Bezos yacht, the aptly named The Flying Fox, is one of the longest superyachts in the world at a staggering 414 feet in length.

The Flying Fox also comes with a host of amenities, such as a helipad, swimming pool, spa, and multiple outdoor entertaining areas.

Bezos also reportedly spent over $400 million on the vessel.

Other notable owners of superyachts include Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, who owns the $200 million Kingdom 5KR, and Oracle founder Larry Ellison, who owns the $200 million Rising Sun.

There are also many lesser-known owners, such as hedge-fund manager Ken Griffin, who owns the $150 million Aviva, and investor Sir Philip Green, who owns the $100 million Lionheart.

No matter who owns them, superyachts are sure to turn heads.

With their impressive size, luxurious amenities, and hefty price tags, these vessels have become a symbol of wealth and prestige.

Whether its the Emir of Qatar or a lesser-known owner, the worlds superyacht owners are sure to make a statement.

Notable Superyacht Owners

When it comes to the wealthiest and most luxurious owners of superyachts, the list reads like a whos who of the worlds billionaires.

At the top of the list is the Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, who holds the distinction of owning the most expensive superyacht in the world.

Aside from the Emir, other notable owners include Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich, Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.

All of these owners have made headlines with their extravagant vessels, which are typically priced between $30 million and $400 million.

The amenities that come with these vessels vary greatly from owner to owner, but they almost always include luxurious swimming pools, helicopter pads, on-board cinemas, and spas.

Some owners opt for more extravagant features, such as submarines, personal submarines, and even their own personal submarines! Other owners prefer to keep their vessels out of the public eye, but for those who prefer a more showy approach, they can certainly make a statement with a superyacht.

No matter who owns the vessel, it’s no surprise that these superyachts are a status symbol among the world’s wealthiest.

Whether you’re trying to impress your peers or just looking to enjoy a luxurious outing, owning a superyacht is the ultimate way to show off your wealth.

What Amenities are Included on Superyachts?

Owning a superyacht is a sign of wealth and prestige, and many of the worlds most prominent billionaires have their own vessels.

The most expensive superyacht in the world is owned by the Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, while other notable owners include Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich, Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.

The cost of a superyacht can range from $30 million to over $400 million, but the price tag doesnt quite capture the sheer extravagance and amenities of these vessels.

Superyachts come with all the comforts of home, and then some.

Many owners will equip their vessels with swimming pools, helicopter pads, on-board cinemas, spas, and other luxury amenities.

The interior of a superyacht can be custom-designed to the owners specifications.

Some owners opt for modern, sleek designs, while others prefer a more traditional look.

Many of the most luxurious yachts feature marble floors, walk-in closets, and custom-made furniture.

Some vessels even come with a full-service gym, complete with exercise equipment and trained professionals.

Other amenities may include a library, casino, media room, and private bar.

When it comes to outdoor amenities, superyachts have some of the most impressive features in the world.

Many yachts come with outdoor entertainment areas, complete with full kitchens, dining rooms, and lounge areas.

Some owners even opt for hot tubs or jacuzzis for relaxing afternoons in the sun.

And, of course, there are the jet skis, water slides, and other exciting water activities that come with many of these vessels.

No matter what amenities a superyacht has, it is sure to be an experience like no other.

From the sleek interiors to the luxurious outdoor features, these vessels provide a unique, luxurious experience that is unrivaled on land.

Whether you’re looking for a relaxing escape or an exciting adventure, a superyacht is sure to provide.

How Much Do Superyachts Cost?

When it comes to superyachts, the sky is the limit when it comes to cost.

These luxury vessels come with hefty price tags that can range from anywhere between $30 million to over $400 million.

So, if youre in the market for a superyacht, youre looking at an investment that could easily break the bank.

The cost of a superyacht is driven by a variety of factors, including size, amenities, and customization.

Generally, the larger the yacht, the more expensive it will be.

Superyachts typically range in size from 100 feet to over 200 feet, and they can be as wide as 40 feet.

The bigger the yacht, the more luxurious features and amenities it will have.

Amenities also play a significant role in the cost of a superyacht.

While some owners prefer to keep their yachts out of the public eye, others have made headlines with their extensive amenities.

From swimming pools and helicopter pads to on-board cinemas and spas, the sky is the limit when it comes to customizing a superyacht.

The more amenities a superyacht has, the more expensive it will be.

Finally, customization is another major factor that will drive up the cost of a superyacht.

Many luxury vessels have custom-designed interiors that are tailored to the owners tastes.

From custom furniture and artwork to lighting and audio systems, the cost of a superyacht can quickly escalate depending on the level of customization.

In short, the cost of a superyacht can vary widely depending on its size, amenities, and customization.

While some may be able to get away with spending a few million dollars, others may end up spending hundreds of millions of dollars on their dream yacht.

No matter what your budget is, its important to do your research and find out exactly what youre getting for your money before signing on the dotted line.

Keeping Superyachts Out of the Public Eye

When it comes to owning a superyacht, some owners prefer to keep their vessels out of the public eye.

Understandably, these individuals are concerned with privacy and discretion, and therefore tend to take measures to ensure their yachts are not visible to outsiders.

For instance, some superyacht owners opt to keep their vessels in private marinas, away from the public areas of larger ports.

Additionally, some yacht owners may choose to hire security guards to patrol and protect their vessels while they are moored or sailing.

In addition to physical security, some superyacht owners also use technology to keep their vessels out of the public eye.

For example, a yacht owner may choose to install a satellite-based communications system that allows them to keep their vessel completely off-radar.

This system works by bouncing signals off satellites rather than transmitting them, making it virtually impossible for anyone to track the yachts movements.

Finally, some superyacht owners also choose to limit the number of people who have access to their vessels.

For instance, the owner may only allow family members and close friends to board the yacht.

Additionally, the owner may choose to employ a limited number of staff to help maintain the vessel and keep it running smoothly.

These individuals may be required to sign non-disclosure agreements to ensure they do not disclose any information about the yacht or its owner.

Overall, while some superyacht owners may choose to keep their vessels out of the public eye, there are still plenty of other ways to show off the opulence associated with owning a superyacht.

From swimming pools and helicopter pads to on-board cinemas and spas, there are many luxurious amenities that can make a superyacht the envy of any jet setter.

Final Thoughts

Superyachts are a symbol of luxury and status, and the list of yacht owners reads like a who’s who of billionaires.

From the Emir of Qatar’s world-record breaking $400 million yacht to Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen’s vessel with a helicopter pad and on-board spa, the amenities of these luxury vessels are truly stunning.

With prices ranging from $30 million to over $400 million, owning a superyacht is an expensive endeavor.

Whether you’re looking to purchase one or just curious to learn more about the owners and their amenities, this guide will provide you with all the information you need to stay up to date with the superyacht scene.

James Frami

At the age of 15, he and four other friends from his neighborhood constructed their first boat. He has been sailing for almost 30 years and has a wealth of knowledge that he wants to share with others.

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