Pritzker’s $54 Million Family Trust Fee Seen as Unique
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Receiving $54 million in consulting fees for a decade’s work on her own family’s offshore trusts is unusual and probably saved U.S. Commerce Secretary nominee Penny Pritzker on taxes, according to estate experts.
“I don’t remember ever working on a trust that paid a consulting fee to a beneficiary,” said Robert Lawrence, chairman of the private client department at Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft LLP in New York who’s been specializing in international trusts since the late 1960s. The $54 million “is a very large amount of money and in my experience is very unusual as a consultant’s fee, especially if it were to a beneficiary.”