We’ve seen a lot about the philanthropic organizations, many of them focused on Jewish issues, that have taken huge hits after entrusting their money to Bernard Madoff. And Madoff’s own philanthropic foundation was managed by its proprietor’s investment firm, of course.
But Madoff’s sons had their own foundations — and it looks like they did things differently. Rather than entrusting the money to their father, Mark and Andrew Madoff appear to have relied on Neuberger Berman and Lehman Brothers to manage the funds, according to documents dug up by the blog Cityfile New York. (Until September, Lehman was Neuberger’s parent company.)
Even with Lehman’s collapse — which ultimately led to Neuberger being taken over by its top executives, pending approval by a bankruptcy court, the brothers appear to have made a very wise decision*.
That’s not to suggest that Mark and Andrew, who both worked for their father’s company, supervising the firm’s stock-trading desks, knew anything about their father’s operation that led them to turn to an outside firm
The New York Times reports today that investigators have so far found no evidence that would contradict Madoff’s initial statement, according to a criminal complaint filed last week, that it was “all his fault.”
But at the very least, it suggests they perhaps didn’t view their father as the omniscient wizard of the market that he often seemed to present himself as.
* This sentence has been corrected from an earlier version.