I read, with continuing interest, the latest media reports trying to explain the legalese in leaked documents about the latest twists in the unfortunate family quarrel over the estates of the late Caribbean hotel and tourism magnate, Founding Chairman of Sandals Resorts International (SRI) Gordon ‘Butch’ Stewart.
That done, I concluded that if the late legendary Caribbean investor had learned two lessons now being taught by the experiences of two fellow global investors of worth, such confusing media accounts might not have been.
Free counsel being offered today by Warren Buffet (the legendary 94-year-old Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway) and Rupert Murdoch (the 93-year-old international media mogul and owner of Fox News), could certainly have made today’s headlines quite different.
But first, a bit about the two men…
Buffet is the man everyone goes to about where next to invest and his advice is always simple but direct, sometimes sounding strange but always making damn-good top-dollar investment sense.
Murdoch built a massive global media empire spanning continents and is the man arch-conservatives worldwide – from Britain’s Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher to US President Donald Trump — can always trust to have their back at Fox.
Neither would have charged ‘Butch’ a penny — even a cent — for the advice they’re sharing with the world today.
Lawyers for the contending sides are battling over how the late SRI Chair and Stewart family patriarch would have wanted his estate shared, by interpreting written and unwritten statements and supposed signed and unsigned declarations of intent.
The contending heirs and successors include sons and daughters, in-laws and out-of-laws, kith-and-kins and next-of-kins — family sections in different places publicly trading equally high stocks of mistrust over the dividing dividends of inherited corporate and family trusts.
The legal documents being quoted can make a library of silent inferences, hinted possibilities and differing precedents that any reporter would need legal advice to help unravel.
But in most cases, what was presented as ‘Breaking News’ to the region’s courts of public opinion on this case were mere direct quotes that lay persons would have had to read more than once to (hopefully) understand what is and what is not.
Separate executors of Stewart’s estates are being presented as ready to execute each other over whether he knowingly changed his will one day before he died, or if different documents from different trusts in different countries reflect anything different from his Last Post.
So then, how could Buffet and Murdoch have helped Stewart?
Consider the following possibilities:
For one, Murdoch is desperately trying to change his mind on one of his family trusts to give his eldest son full control of Fox (over three other siblings), but a top US court tied his hand on Monday, saying even though he wants to, he legally can’t.
Buffet, on the other hand, isn’t in court with anyone in his family over his estate because he’s taken definite steps to avoid any fights over whatever he leaves when he takes that final trip to Neverland.
The Berkshire Boss is reported to have given his son, in advance, what he would have had to wait longer for at the end of his dad’s continuing long and healthy life — and also safely arranged to leave US $147 Billion to charity after he takes up his final date with Eternity.
Buffet will buy and sell stocks from and to his own firms, on and off Wall Street, by reading the names and following the figures by their rates and numbers — in black and white, green and red — instead of following his heart.
Murdoch, on the other hand, will spend all it’ll take for what’s left of his life to get his way around the court’s ruling, to ensure his chosen son stays at the helm at Fox News.
The SRI Chair was also known to opt to go to court whenever he felt SRI was not being treated equally as a Caribbean Community (CARICOM) investor and is also said (by a family insider) to have “done what he had to” to avoid a family fight over the treasured goose and its golden eggs.
Buffet keeps on the wall in his private office a 123-year-old copy of a ‘New York Times’ story about an investor who jumped to his death in a vat of boiling beer in 1901, after discovering he’d made a ruinous investment — and says he keeps that page on his wall to remind himself that “I never want to end up in a vat of hot beer!”
So, what would Buffet have told ‘Butch’ if the two met today?
He would simply have advised Stewart to personally read his will to all his children, to avoid leaving an unwanted legacy of rivalling siblings and tugging families.
The Founding Chair may not have been legally able to change his private trusts, but insiders confirm he did summon the family around his dying bed and named his last son, Adam, to succeed him at SRI’s helm.
The Golden Goose has retired to The Great Beyond and though known to have generally, carefully and meticulously crossed his ‘t’s and dotted his ‘i’s, some of the executors of his last wills and testaments seem hell-bent on condemning others to crucifixion over rival interpretations of what he said, signed and intended.
The reports contain Grim Reaper accounts that boom with doom and gloom.
But if Adam has learned anything from his dad, it’s how the captain always stands firm at the helm and keeps the ship not just afloat but always sailing with the wind, speed dictated by tides and currents, but always riding the waves.
Approaching five years since his dad breathed his last breath in January 2020, Adam has stewarded and re-branded SRI as ‘Sandals 2.0’ — and should Time and History be on his side, he’ll surely not be a party to roasting the goose that’s still laying SRI’s golden eggs!