Scooter Braun, best known for his ugly public fight with Taylor Swift, enticed a high-flying banker into a dead-end position by mentioning Kanye West and other celebrities.
Peter Comisar , a former Goldman Sachs partner, claims Braun enticed him to leave his lucrative job at the Guggenheim Securities by securing him a position at the helm of a new boutique investment firm backed by media moguls such as Apple’s Jimmy Iovine, Hollywood mogul David Geffen, and the billionaire Soros family. “By all appearances, Braun was the real deal,” the lawsuit stated.
When it came time to secure funds from his high-powered friends, however, he proved to be a “sheep in wolf’s clothing,” according to the suit. Commissar’s lawsuit filed in Los Angeles state court, Braun aggressively courted him from 2016 to 2017 to start Scope Capital Partners with business manager David Bono.
According to the lawsuit, Braun agreed to pay Scope $7 million per year in operating expenses over three years, including a $3 million per year salary for Comisar.
To entice Comisar, Braun allegedly bragged that he could raise $500 million to $700 million from “close pals” such as Iovine, Geffen, and media mogul Haim Saban. According to the lawsuit, he also named billionaires such as the Mittal, Soros, as well as the Reuben families.
But, according to the lawsuit, those investors never materialized.
“With his tail within his legs, Braun had to demonstrate to Comisar how he had asked David Geffen, his alleged Elder, to fund in Scope, only to be informed via Geffen that he didn’t consider Braun to be somebody with whom Geffen would think of investing.”
The fact was that Braun’s family regarded him as someone with whom they might connect but not commit their millions, according to the suit. “When it got to fundraising, Braun showed himself to be the wolf in sheep’s clothes.”
Meanwhile, the lawsuit says that Braun was accused of double-dealing Comisar with the private equity behemoth Carlyle Group to invest in his Ithaca Holdings, which was later sold, to make the same kinds of entertainment and consumer space investments that were to be the focus at Scope.
Scope’s private equity strategy was “in conflict” with Carlyle’s deal, he alleges. Thus his agreement was annulled. The former talent manager stopped supporting Scope and paying Commissar’s salary in April 2018.
According to the lawsuit, Bono later informed Comisar that “people in the entertainment sector don’t follow their contractual duties” and that if Comisar pursued them for breach of contract, “Braun would damage Comisar’sComisar’s clean name” and “ruin him financially.”
According to the lawsuit, Braun and Bono had separate meetings with Comisar about a “smear campaign” in which they would claim that the Wall Street veteran had been sacked from his partner post at Goldman and that his career at Guggenheim had come to an end, both of which are false.
Comisar formally notified Braun and Bolno that they had breached his contract, and court filings soon followed, alleging that the two had “falsely accused” Comisar of racism as a “predicate for his removal.” The accusation of racism was not included in the lawsuit.