Tilton is a philanthropist for women’s causes who named the buyout firm she founded Patriarch Partners LLC and mailed out Christmas cards of herself dressed in lingerie. A buyer of old-economy businesses such as clothing retailer Spiegel LLC and map maker Rand McNally & Co., Tilton nevertheless embraced new and complex forms of debt to fund her companies.
The SEC allegations threaten to tarnish Tilton’s 30-plus-year career on Wall Street. Before the single mom became known as the “The Diva of Distressed” through a short-lived reality television pilot on the Sundance Channel, Tilton was a nationally ranked teenage tennis player in Teaneck, New Jersey, a banker for Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and a Merrill Lynch & Co. distressed-debt trader.
The case is Norddeutsche Landesbank Girozentrale v. Tilton, 651695/2015, New York State Supreme Court, New York County (Manhattan).