Zoe Cruz has had a tough couple of years. Once the highest paid woman in finance and on track to succeed Jack Mack as CEO of Morgan Stanley, Ms. Cruz was publicly ousted from the firm in 2007 after the mortgage unit she ran lost $3.7 billion. Just last year she had to liquidate her $200 million hedge fund, Voras Capital, when its value dropped 8 percent in a year, and now, according to rumors reported by the New York Post, she’s splitting up with Ernesto Cruz, her husband of three decades.
Nothing a little real estate therapy can’t solve. Ms. Cruz—but not Mr. Cruz—just closed on a $7.34 million, 15th-floor unit at 912 Fifth Avenue, a limestone pre-war building between East 72nd and 73rd Streets, according to city records.
The unit boasts 2,700 square feet of space, three bedrooms and bathrooms and two maid’s rooms (it hasn’t been on the market for 40 years), but likely isn’t in great condition—”Bring your architect/designer,” the listing description reads ominously. The building’s bones were, however, solid enough that Lord Norman Foster bought up the whole eighth floor a few years ago.
Ms. Cruz bought the apartment from the estate of Leon Jolson, who passed away at home in 2009 at the ripe old age of 96. Mr. Jolson was born in Poland, and survived the Warsaw Ghetto and concentration camp before emigrating to New York after the war, where he made his millions selling sewing machines.
The sale—which closed a bit above the $7.2 million ask—was brokered by Susanna Lendrum of Corcoran, who told The Observer that the buyer and seller did not want any press (oops!).
