Chapter 3 - WHAT SAMUEL VALE OWNEDMy father was rich.
That is simpler to say than pretending otherwise.
Vale Advanced Materials manufactured specialty composites used in aerospace, medical equipment, industrial systems, and energy infrastructure.
Dad started it at thirty-three with two engineers in a leased Connecticut warehouse.
By the year he died, the company employed approximately twenty-eight hundred people.
Publicly traded?
No.
Privately held.
Valuation depended on whose banker you asked.
Recent internal transactions placed enterprise value around $420 million.
My father owned approximately 46 percent of the voting equity.
Richard owned 13 percent.
Senior management and an employee trust held around 17 percent.
The remaining interests belonged to early investors and family trusts.
Dad was wealthy on paper.
Not carrying hundreds of millions in a vault.
His personal estate included:
The Greenwich house.
Investment accounts.
A minority real-estate portfolio.
Art my mother had collected.
Life insurance.
And, most importantly, his Vale shares.
His 2022 estate plan was not mysterious.
I had seen the broad structure.
Dad had shown me after my mother died.
He wanted the majority of his company interest placed into a long-term trust for me and any future children I might have.
Not because he expected me to become CEO.
I was a structural engineer specializing in rehabilitation of old industrial buildings.
I sat on Vale’s board but did not work full-time for the company.
Dad liked that.
Richard did not.
Under the 2022 plan:
I would receive economic benefit from most of Dad’s shares.
An independent trustee would control a significant voting block for an initial period.
Some shares would eventually become directly votable by me.
Vale’s employee trust received additional equity.
A charitable foundation received cash assets.
Richard received a specific bequest and certain real estate.
Substantial.
Approximately $4 million in value.
Plus the 13 percent of Vale he already owned.
Richard was not being disinherited.
May you like
He was simply not getting Dad’s 46 percent.
That distinction apparently felt insulting enough.
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