Banker buys ex-boss’s house and rebuilds it in ‘revenge’

AN AMERICAN hedge fund billionaire bought the home of a former boss who passed him over for promotion – then tore it down and built a mansion twice as big on the same spot.

David Tepper paid the ex-wife of Jon Corzine, the former CEO of Goldman Sachs, $43.5 million (£28.5 million) for the summer home in Sagaponack, Long Island, in 2010 and flattened it.

Ordering the building of a new property, he seemed intent on creating something bigger and better. Five years later, the full extent of the 58-year-old hedge fund manager’s “revenge” seems complete. The new 11,268sq ft mansion is almost exactly twice the size of his one-time boss’s property. The estate includes a giant outdoor swimming pool and pool house, three-car garage and tennis court.

The completion of the beachfront house, in an area of the Hamptons that has long been a playground for the wealthy, may bring closure to a feud that began more than two decades ago.

After reportedly playing a critical role in protecting Goldman Sachs from a financial crash in the late Eighties, Mr Tepper assumed that he would be made a partner. When he was not chosen, he blamed Mr Corzine, the head of his division, with whom he was said to have had a fractious relationship.

Mr Tepper left to start hedge fund Appaloosa in 1993 and became a billionaire in 10 years. He is one of the highest-paid fund managers in the US, earning $3.5 billion in 2013, according to Forbes magazine.

But Mr Tepper, who is described by colleagues as having a loud, sometimes brash demeanour, appeared not to have forgotten Mr Corzine’s alleged slight. After buying the home from his 68-yearold former boss’s ex-wife in 2010, he told New York Magazine: “You could say there was a little justice in the world.”