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He would marry me in a second.” Gemme, she says, was afraid Patriarch would sell the company for parts. “Now we get along great,” Tilton says with a laugh. Do you understand that dance?” Then she stormed out.
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So when I say ‘Step right,’ you step right. “You’ve showed me no respect and no appreciation,” she hissed.
Lynn tilton american lafrance full#
Not in the boardroom.’ I’m thinking, I’m going to buy this company, and I’m going to fire these arrogant men.” A week later, at the bankruptcy auction, when Gemme, who had been at the company for 32 years, failed to provide essential paperwork, Tilton grabbed him by the knot of his tie and, in a boardroom full of people, shoved him against the wall.
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“He was like, ‘In Italy, we like-a the women,’ ” she says. Like Claudio Gemme, the CEO of Ansaldo Sistemi Industriali, a producer of electric motors and generators, who failed to treat Tilton with proper respect when she first came to tour the soon-to-be-bankrupt factory in Genoa in 2005. “My job is to make men better men,” Tilton often says, and that includes teaching lessons to the ones who try to hold her back. “I’ll be your girlfriend,” she’s told clients, “but I won’t be your bitch.” But this is pretty much how she sees herself: an Ayn Rand heroine in six-inch heels who has men stay the night, then eats them for breakfast. Her brand of femininity is so over-the-top, so cartoonish, it’s as if she were playing a part, the Wonder Woman of Wall Street. “There’s never been a carcass I wouldn’t put on my back,” says Tilton, adding that she’s been a vegetarian for 40 years, so she’s earned it. Today she has chosen a Roberto Cavalli miniskirt accessorized with spike-heeled suede boots and a fur-trimmed cape. It’s hard not to notice: Tilton’s lipstick is frosty pink, her eyelashes are long and inky black, her hair is Barbie-doll blonde, with curls spilling over cleavage that is invariably visible, invariably tan, invariably accentuated by a diamond necklace, and invariably supported by a tight-fitting garment made by one of her favorite designers. And,” she adds, lowering her already deep Mae West voice another octave, “as you may have noticed, I am all woman.” “I take pride in the fact that I can be all woman in a man’s world. “I don’t want to feel like I have to fit into a male mode to be this sort of successful industrialist,” she continues. Tilton, 51, is the founder and CEO of Patriarch Partners, a private-equity firm that specializes in the takeover of distressed manufacturers of a decidedly masculine nature: fire-truck-maker American LaFrance, MD helicopters, automotive company Dura. “I think women too often give up their identity in a man’s world and believe they’ll only be successful if they’re close to what men are or what men expect them to be,” she says at a New Haven coffee shop, spearing her latte with a straw. Lynn Tilton doesn’t think women should have to act like men to be successful in business. Hair by Bryan Lynde Makeup by Edward Cruz