Deals

That Disney tizzy revealed some interesting characters, not least the almost unheard-of Fisher Brothers

THE two patrician figures in well-cut suits lunching at "21" one rainy summer Monday showed neither the elation of having just made nearly a million dollars nor the disappointment of seeing a larger prize slip away.

Donald Trump and Leona Helmsley peer out from every magazine, but Larry Fisher, seventy-five, and his brother, Zachary, seventy-four, who own just as much of the Manhattan Monopoly board, are very shy and secretive men. With a net worth put at more than $500 million, their real-estate empire stretches from Miami hotels to New Jersey shopping centers to some of Manhattan's choicest skyscrapers.

Over the red-checked "21" tablecloth, the Fishers were presumably dissecting Saul P. Steinberg's failed attempt to buy Walt Disney Productions for $1.5 billion. For partially backing Steinberg, the Fishers got $750,000 plus part of any profits from the sale of his stock if he withdrew. And the evening before, Steinberg had done just that, grossing $59.8 million for selling his shares back to Disney. The financial press called it "greenmail." By a published formula, the Fishers will get $174,300 of Steinberg's profits (if the courts uphold the Steinberg-Disney settlement), bringing their gains to $924,300.

Steinberg's bid had occupied the business pages for weeks. The American public was fascinated by a high-finance drama starring Mickey Mouse and set in Disneyland, though Steinberg, a pudgy forty-five-yearold self-made millionaire, could scarcely be cast as a lovable elf.

In some ways it was a typical Fisher Brothers deal, with limited risk and high rewards. The Fishers are masters of this art: before a desk was moved into Park Avenue Plaza, which cost about $100 million, they had rental commitments of $450 million.

Yet, in other ways the Steinberg deal was atypical, for it involved them peripherally in controversy. "lam not the sort of guy, ' ' Larry Fisher told me in abroad New York accent, "who likes to see his name in the newspapers. ' ' He has not often seen it there. Astonishingly, he and brother Zachary have not appeared by name in the New York Times index for the past ten years. Neither are they listed in standard reference books.

Public glimpses are few. In winter, their Gulfstream III jets them to Palm Beach, where Larry plays a game of tennis that leaves younger men gasping. They go to Le Club, a private night spot in their Sutton Place neighborhood. Larry is sometimes seen at T. J. Tucker, a First Avenue restaurant owned by his pal the former football star Tucker Frederickson. In a rare public act of philanthropy, Zach helped bankroll the conversion of a World War II aircraft carrier, the U.S.S. Intrepid, into a floating museum on the Hudson—a metal plate at "21 " commemorates it.

The Fishers' first recorded real-estate deal came while they were still in their teens, in 1926, with a modest Philadelphia bank building. In the 1930s and '40s, they erected apartment buildings in Queens, and moved up to Manhattan office towers in the 1960s and '70s—the J. P. Stevens and Burlington buildings, on Sixth Avenue, the Burroughs skyscraper, on Third, and the Westvaco tower, on Park, where their modest offices occupy the top floor.

There are at least a dozen buildings in midtown where the Fisher name is on the directory board or where the employees' uniforms bear the Fisher symbol—a red skyscraper in the middle of their logo—but a supplier who has seen the master list told me that three dozen skyscrapers is more like it. That would place their Manhattan holdings alone in the $3 to $4 billion category.

In the late 1970s, they began planning a tower between Fiftysecond and Fifty-third streets just off Park Avenue, behind the stately Racquet & Tennis Club. To get a Park Avenue address, and higher rents, they sought an entrance through the club itself. A deal seemed likely, but the clubmen upped their demand to $1.2 million a year. The Fishers quickly outwitted them, getting the city to designate their site Park Avenue Plaza. The club fought back with blueprints for its own hotel tower, which would have blocked the Fishers' view, but it was most likely a bluff. The battle was resolved when the Fishers paid it a flat fee of $5 million for the Park Avenue view—a lot less than $1.2 million a year. Some likened the fracas to a Boy Scout troop's trying to stave off Rommel ' s panzers.

Why did the Fishers get entangled in Steinberg's unpopular bid for Disney? ' 'They know real estate," says a close observer, "and they realized that the Disney theme parks had big amounts of unused or underutilized land. They were going to get the land as their part of the deal, build hotels, and make a huge profit, even by Larry and Zach's standards." Instead, Steinberg sold his shares back to Disney, leaving the Fishers with close to a million dollars they may not have wanted. "I think," says the observer, "they'll stick to things that are more their bag now. ' '

Don Rosendale