Woes of the Rich
How do you convince an offspring of a wealthy family to drive to university in a Mazda instead of a Porsche? Why selling a yacht is more complicated than you think, and how can you divide up huge inheritances peacefully? Philippe Weil, a wealth management consultant, lives in a rented apartment on Rothschild Boulevard and drives a Toyota, yet is very familiar with the lives of the upper thousandth percentile and also wrote a book about it. Here he discloses the headaches of those who have lots and lots of money.
As fate would have it, the meeting with Philippe Weil, a former banker who is now an expert in managing the family fortune of the very rich, took place on exactly the same morning as the news that Shari Arison is selling half of her holdings of Bank Hapoalim. When I ask Weil about this, he responds spontaneously: “Mazal Tov.” I wondered whether this was an expression of his opinion, based on his personal familiarity with the topic, and this led to a clarification. “I know neither her nor the bank,” he says, “but when someone makes a decision, it is commendable. I love it. It is very difficult to make decisions about family wealth, because the family always tells you later: ‘Why did you sell the business? If you had kept it, we would have been rich today.’ But sometimes, you simply have to make the decision.”
Our meeting took place in his office on the 27th floor of the tower at 3 Rothschild Boulevard in Tel-Aviv. Despite the works of art on the wall and the spectacular view of the sea and of Neveh Tsedek, the most interesting thing in the room is Weil’s socks: colorful, happy stripes. “I really love buying socks. My shirt is 20 years old, and my shoes …” (he points to his neatly polished shoes) “… are ten years old. I don’t wander around malls and try not to buy superfluous stuff. Last week I was in New York for 60 hours between landing and take-off, and no malls and no restaurants. What is this, shopping all the time? What? Every trip I have to bring something home?”
“I sit with someone and say to him: ‘This yacht costs you a lot of money. Do you really need it?’ and he says: ‘But what will my friends say? What? Have you run out of money? Are you broke? Are you having a liquidation sale? What? Are you no longer in our club?’”
Yes, despite his 21 years in Israel, his marriage to an Israeli woman, three children (9, 13, 15) and an apartment in central Tel-Aviv, when at issue is money, mainly other people’s money, Weil – the owner of P.J. Weil Ltd., a family wealth management firm – remains the most un-Israeli there is. It’s not surprising, considering the fact that conferences where Weil is a guest lecturer are attended by VIPs like Lacoste and Rockefeller. Not the brands, but the actual people in person. “I was introduced once to Mr. Lacoste,” he says. “Wherever you go, people say: ‘Ah, you are the guy with the shirts.’ It’s not easy.”
His experience as a banker, as a consultant for people with vast wealth, and as a sought-after lecturer, led Weill recently, just a moment before his 50th birthday, to write a book about it. “Woes of the Wealthy” (Asia Publishing), in which, besides true stories about how to manage vast wealth, one can find advice and principles that are suitable for everyone, even the Israeli middle class. “A lot of my friends in the field have written books in English,” says Weil, “but in Hebrew, there is nothing. I thought to myself: What? Is the market too small? Are there no woes of the wealthy here? And then I understood that I have been in this field for 30 years and what turns me on is changing someone’s life for the better. And a book is a way to make a difference.”