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Michael Eisner isn’t waiting around to see how the war at the Pierre ends.
The former Disney chief, already a two-time owner inside the embattled Fifth Avenue co-op, just closed on a $10 million off-market apartment at the Sherry Netherland hotel, property records show.
The move puts him a block away from the building where he and dozens of other wealthy shareholders are facing the possibility of losing their homes entirely.
Eisner and his wife Jane bought unit 25T from the Broad Revocable Trust, tied to the family of the late art collector Eli Broad and his widow Edythe.
The two-bedroom, 2.5-bath spread runs 2,500 square feet inside the 38-story tower at 781 Fifth Ave., steps from Central Park and known for its white glove service, including attended elevators, daily housekeeping and room service from Harry Cipriani.
The timing is hard to ignore.
The Pierre has spent the better part of a year locked in a bitter fight over a proposed $2 billion sale that would hand the historic building to Saudi buyer Motasem Khashoggi and put it under the management of the Dorchester Collection, owned by the Sultan of Brunei.
If two thirds of shareholders approve the deal this fall, every resident, no matter how long they’ve lived there or how much they’ve spent renovating, will have to give up their apartment or be evicted and forfeit their cut of the payout.
Eisner, who last year spent $4.3 million buying a second Pierre apartment and picking up more co-op shares along with it, joined a July 29th shareholder meeting on the sale by Zoom rather than in person, as tempers flared inside the hotel’s Cotillion Ballroom.
The gathering, meant to finally answer residents’ questions, instead turned into what multiple attendees described as a “s–tshow.”
Investor Austin Hearst told the room representatives from Dorchester and Khashoggi Holding had done “a miserable f–king job” laying out the terms.
Fashion designer Tory Burch pressed them on the roughly 400 hotel employees whose jobs hang in the balance, saying “I have people in the elevator crying that they feel like their job is on the line every five minutes.”
Longtime resident Tina Beriro, 85, put the math on aging owners bluntly, warning “many of us are going to be dead by the time you finish.”
And Eisner isn’t the only Pierre name hedging. Larry Ellison bought two units from Shari Redstone for $24 million in an off-market deal in November, another sign that some of the building’s richest residents would rather cash out quietly than wait for a shareholder vote that could upend their lives.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who owns the Pierre’s trophy penthouse but has never lived in it, sat out the July meeting entirely, tied up at the Oval Office the same day.
His absence didn’t sit well given his sons now run Newmark, the brokerage that stands to earn a fee on the very sale their father would profit from as the co-op’s largest shareholder.
Board president David Johnson has declined to comment on the meeting or the terms of the bid, calling it a private matter among shareholders.
As of now, the Pierre’s board still hasn’t set a release date for the long-promised proxy statement laying out the sale’s actual terms.
English (US)