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Following the sale of Jetro Restaurant Depot to Sysco, the Kirsh family is recruiting senior investors to guide an expanding New York family office

The Kirsh family is building out what is expected to be one of the largest family offices created in recent years after its patriarch, Nathan Kirsh, sold his restaurant supply company, Jetro Restaurant Depot, earlier this year for $29 billion, including debt.

Representatives for the family have been interviewing potential investment chiefs, investment committee members and advisers for the existing Kirsh family office in New York, sometimes called Kifo, as they prepare to manage the sudden influx of money, said people familiar with the matter. The family—Kirsh and his three children and their families—also has kicked off a search process for a head of private investments and a head of public investments.

The family currently has a few employees in its small family office and works with outside investment firms, the people familiar said. They ultimately expect to have most of their fortune managed through their revamped family office, including oversight of money managed by outside firms. The company sale to Sysco, which is expected to close by the end of the first quarter, was for $22 billion in cash and 91.5 million in Sysco shares, worth about $7.2 billion at Tuesday’s close.

The Kirshes are part of an explosive wealth boom at the top. Total U.S. household wealth reached a record $185.7 trillion in the second quarter of 2026, according to Federal Reserve data, though new wealth is disproportionately accruing to the already well-off. The share of wealth held by families in the top 0.1% climbed to 15% from 13.5% five years earlier; families in the rest of the top 1%, a much larger group, saw their share of wealth hit 17.5%, from 17.2%.

The number of single-family offices, which manage the fortunes and affairs of a single family, roughly reflects the surge in wealth at the top. Wealth-intelligence firm Altrata estimates there were 9,237 single family offices globally in 2025, up from 6,269 in 2019.

Jeff Bezos’ stepfather, Mike Bezos, hired a chief executive for his Miami-based family office last year as he began institutionalizing it; he and his late wife, Jacklyn Bezos, were estimated to be worth about $45 billion earlier that year. SGF Capital was set up in Dallas in 2024 to manage the fortune of the late oilman Autry Stephens, who died in 2024, months after selling his company for $26 billion. Members of the Mills family, who in 2021 sold their majority stake in medical-supplies distributor Medline Industries to a private-equity consortium for more than $30 billion excluding debt, set up several family offices—Cedar Pine, Council Ring Capital and MBB Capital Partners—to manage their pieces of the fortune.

Nvidia Chief Executive Jensen Huang, whose fortune has climbed to an estimated nearly $200 billion, has a small family office but also has become a client of multifamily office Iconiq Capital in San Francisco, according to people familiar with the matter.

A family office’s function varies depending on the desires of the family that forms it, but the most sophisticated can manage a family’s fortune as well as provide tax-and-estate planning, legal counsel and concierge services like private planes, bill pay, household staffing and the management of a portfolio of homes. Some advise a single-family office is worth setting up only if a family has a net worth of at least $1 billion.

Joining a family office can come with risks for investment staff compared to working at an institutional investment firm. A patriarch or matriarch could change his or her mind about wanting to have and manage a family office, and opportunities for promotion can be slimmer. Navigating family dynamics, which can grow trickier as a family grows more complex, also is a consideration. Family offices today often need to operate across generations and jurisdictions, according to Citigroup’s 2026 Global Family Office Report, based on its survey of 351 family office clients.

Headhunters say good governance can reduce some risks of joining a family office and that a family’s long-term investment horizon can be attractive.

Born in South Africa to Lithuanian Jewish immigrants, Nathan “Natie” Kirsh, 94, early on served small businesses during apartheid that sought affordable goods through his wholesale distribution business. Customers, including Black shopkeepers who didn’t have access to credit, visited his warehouses to pick up produce and other items and pay with cash, a model that cut delivery and distribution costs.

He was looking abroad for opportunities by the mid-1970s. During a visit to New York, he studied how bodegas sourced their goods and found it inefficient, he told a London Business School class in 2011, looking back on a career that had spanned continents and companies. He founded Jetro Cash & Carry in Brooklyn in 1976 with a similar model and built what became Jetro Restaurant Depot into a dominant force in the restaurant-supply market. “I have an instinct to see opportunity where others may not,” he said in the talk.

Restaurant Depot operates 167 stores across 35 states and had about $16 billion in revenue in 2025.

Linda Mirel, one of Kirsh’s children and an immediate past president of UJA-Federation of New York, is heavily involved in the process of building out the family office, the people said. She is working with executive search firm BraddockMatthewsBarrett. Members of the family, which also include Kirsh’s other daughter, Wendy Fisher, chair of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, are located in New York, London, Los Angeles and elsewhere.

The search firm has described the investment chief as having a “rare” mandate to create a family office investment platform from the ground up.

The chief investment officer is expected to build an endowment-style portfolio, a team and the family office’s investment processes and infrastructure, according to the people familiar with the matter.

The family’s investment portfolio includes a London skyscraper called Tower 42, Australian real-estate company Abacus Property Group and a stake in outsourced CIO firm Partners Capital. Partners has managed part of their wealth to date, along with consulting-and-OCIO firm Cambridge Associates.

Sycamore Partners is in talks with billionaire Weston family about deal valued at roughly $9 billion, including debt

Walgreens’ private-equity owner is nearing a deal to sell U.K. pharmacy chain Boots for close to $9 billion including debt, according to people familiar with the matter.

It has been discussing a deal to sell Boots to the Canadian arm of the Weston family, which owns a food-business empire, the people said. A deal could be completed in the coming weeks, assuming talks don’t fall apart.

The details

Sycamore Partners took Walgreens private in 2025 in a deal valued at $24 billion including debt (and roughly $10 billion without). It separated the company into five units to facilitate potential sales of noncore units, including Boots.

Boots houses the former international businesses of Walgreens, which includes Boots operations in the U.K. and businesses in Thailand, Mexico, Germany and China.

The Weston family, worth billions, is a Canadian-British food-business clan that traces its roots to a bakery business founded in Toronto in 1882. The family’s Canadian contingent oversees an empire that includes Loblaw, Canada’s largest food retailer and the operator of Shoppers Drug Mart, one of the country’s biggest pharmacy chains.

In the U.K., another part of the family is invested in Associated British Foods, a large food-processing company and retailer.

The context

Walgreens was in the midst of a turnaround effort when Sycamore bought it. Its market value had dropped more than 90% from its roughly $100 billion peak in 2015.

Selling Boots at the price being discussed would be an early win for Sycamore, which is poised to make a sizable return on the sale. It would also allow the firm to focus on reviving Walgreen’s U.S. operations. The pharmacy chain has roughly 8,000 stores across all 50 states and Puerto Rico, according to its website.

Sycamore, which is based in New York, oversees assets of about $14 billion and largely focuses on buying retail-related businesses. Its holdings include Staples, an office-supply retailer, and KnitWell Group, which oversees Talbots, Soma and Ann Taylor, among other fashion brands.

They began as modified motorboats. Now, Ukrainian sea drones act as miniature aircraft carriers, and other countries want in.

Ukrainian naval drones ply the Black Sea with surface-to-air missiles, ready to shoot down enemy warplanes. They ferry aerial attack drones closer to targets. And this month, a Ukrainian drone was filmed in a drone-on-drone water battle with a Russian counterpart.

When Russia began its full-scale war against Ukraine, Moscow dominated the waterways. Kyiv scaled up its drone operations, eventually sinking about a third of Russia’s vaunted Black Sea fleet with what amounted to remote-controlled, exploding speedboats.

Now Ukraine is taking it a step further by establishing offshore layers of drone defense and offense, transforming naval warfare along the way.

New technologies arrive on the sea each month. In one instance, a drone boat deposited a four-wheeled, remote-controlled ground vehicle with a mounted machine gun on a Russian-occupied peninsula in what Ukraine called the first ever all-robot amphibious assault.

Remotely operated naval vessels are not unique to Ukraine. Yemen’s Houthi rebels used a drone boat in an attack on a Saudi frigate almost a decade ago. This summer, the United States used unmanned Corsairs to rescue a downed helicopter crew and to attack a naval installation. But Ukraine’s success in fighting a vastly larger Russian Navy is being studied by military planners from Taipei to Tallinn.

“Countries all over the world are looking to Ukraine as an example of how to use them in their own navies,” said Emma Salisbury, a senior fellow at the National Security Program of the Foreign Policy Research Institute.

Remote-controlled vessels are not a replacement for a traditional navy, said Sam J. Tangredi, a professor at the U.S. Naval War College. “Drones are tools in the tool kit,” he said. “They’re useful systems. They will be used in wars. They don’t change the equation.”

Still, the cheap, off-the-shelf nature of Ukraine’s drone flotilla means the barriers to entry are low for would-be defense contractors. Twenty-seven Ukrainian companies are experimenting with new naval platforms and technologies, testing different models and capabilities, which pushes innovation forward, according to Dennis Kanin, director of Ukraine’s Unmanned Naval Association, a trade group.

“For the cost of maintaining a single warship, with water drones you could provide security for a small country,” Mr. Kanin said.

Ukraine’s sea-drone technology has caught the world’s attention. UFORCE, a company founded in Ukraine, recently struck a deal for a joint venture to begin production in the United States. The company makes Magura sea drones, the first kamikaze drones used by Ukraine.

The largest Norwegian defense company, Kongsberg, opened an office in Ukraine and started collaborating with Ukraine’s producer of Sargan sea drones. Other Nordic countries, Baltic countries and Japan have also proposed collaboration, Ukrainian entrepreneurs say.

“All these years, ever since maritime drones started sinking the Russian fleet, countries have been approaching us seeking to acquire these vessels for themselves or establish domestic production, including countries in the Persian Gulf,” said Kyrylo Budanov, Ukraine’s presidential chief of staff.

In March, President Volodymyr Zelensky said that Ukraine was negotiating with Gulf states over delivery of its naval drones, along with air defenses, though it is not clear where those deals stand now.

Unlike Kyiv, which is more than a hundred miles from the Russian border behind layers of air defense, coastal areas such as Odesa — or indeed Abu Dhabi or Dubai — have little warning before an attack with a Shahed, an Iranian-designed exploding drone. Basing air defenses at sea provides more time to detect and shoot down incoming drones.

“For the Gulf states, this could be extremely relevant,” said Oleksiy Honcharuk, a former Ukrainian prime minister and the chairman of UFORCE’s board. “The flight time of Shaheds to their targets is short, while they have many coastal cities and oil terminals located on the coast.”

For defense contractors and military planners, Ukraine’s technology offers advantages. Ukrainian systems are battle-tested, having operated under Russian fire in environments with no GPS signal. Also, Ukraine’s military and the defense start-ups supplying it have focused on inexpensive, easy-to-build drones, platforms that can be scaled up quickly.

“Instead of thinking of a B-52 flying for 75 years, you’re thinking of something where if you don’t use it in conflict year one to five, maybe you break them down to scrap and use them for a new mission,” said Cynthia R. Cook, senior fellow with the Center for the Industrial Base at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “The smaller programs allow for faster refresh.”

Battle-Tested Technology

This new form of naval power began, like so many inventions, with a multitude of failures.

The first Magura drones were based on a civilian motorboat produced in Odesa. Ukrainians began testing the sea drones in the spring of 2023, and the drones have become more sophisticated over time.

“We would lose the drone, then go after it, tow it back, tinker with it, fix something, and it would happen again and again,” a commander with the call sign Thirteen said as his pilots tested sea drones at a secret location. He leads a sea drone unit run by Ukraine’s military spy agency, known as HUR.

On a scorching day this summer at a different training ground, another unit commander at the agency, known as Ninth, sat on a child’s swing beside a lake in central Ukraine. As the swing rocked gently, he watched the latest version of his technology carve the calm inland waters.

Both Thirteen and Ninth asked to be identified only by their call signs, in keeping with their agency’s rules.

The lake near where Ninth sat was a test site for drone boats that launch aerial drones, essentially miniature aircraft carriers, first used last year.

At the time, Ukrainian military planners were preparing an attack on the Russian seaports of Tuapse and Novorossiysk, Ninth said. The Russians had set up radar antennas on offshore oil platforms that were helping to identify incoming drone boats. The Ukrainians needed to take out those antennas in the opening phase of an assault.

Ninth realized that interceptor aerial drones could help. He could fit many on the deck of a three-and-a-half-ton Katran sea drone and use them to bombard coastal targets from sea — or, in this case, to hit an oil platform.

After dark, Ninth ordered the launch of his aircraft carrier drones, he said. They took off from the decks and buzzed toward their targets, guided by operators. The repurposed interceptors destroyed the antennas and killed the Russian soldiers operating them. With the radars taken out, other sea drones slipped through and attacked the Russian ports.

Another new use for the boats came in April this year when Ukraine’s 412th Unmanned Systems Brigade shot down two Russian Shaheds using interceptor drones launched from a water platform.

The systems need to adapt to new threats continually, using air, sea and land robots in different combinations. The next phase for Ukraine’s technology, according to Ninth, will be putting long-range heavy weapons on the sea drones.

Ukrainian commanders see the key to drone warfare not as any particular device but as the teams that are fast to adapt.

“Technology is not what matters most,” said Lieutenant Colonel Kochevenko, who commands the sea battalion of the 412th brigade. “People are.”

Citadel CEO’s gift will launch a Carnegie Mellon University campus in Miami

MIAMI—Hedge-fund titan Ken Griffin is donating $2 billion to start a Carnegie Mellon University campus in Miami, part of the largest-ever individual gift toward higher education.

The Pittsburgh-based university, known for its expertise in computer science, artificial intelligence and robotics, will open a 35-acre campus in Miami’s Wynwood neighborhood that will focus on technology and innovation.

“The students who graduate and the tech companies that come to Miami to leverage those skills will change the very fabric of Miami for decades if not centuries to come,” Griffin said in an interview.

Citadel’s chief executive is also giving $1 billion to Carnegie Mellon’s main Pittsburgh campus. Griffin’s combined $3 billion donation is the largest single gift toward higher education from any individual, according to an announcement from Carnegie Mellon University.

The donation helps advance Griffin’s aim to establish South Florida as a leading global-business and technology hub. A spokesman said Griffin has now given $2.4 billion in donations to South Florida, where he moved his firm Citadel’s headquarters, and more than $5.7 billion in total charitable giving.

“I believe that all great American cities are anchored by great universities and Carnegie Mellon will bring a great university here to Miami complementary to other universities here in the region,” Griffin said.

In addition to the donation, Griffin is joining Carnegie Mellon’s Board of Trustees. CMU’s computer science building in Pittsburgh will also be renamed the Kenneth C. Griffin School of Computer Science.

Citadel has a history of scooping up talent from Carnegie Mellon, boasting a long list of quantitative engineers and other employees who attended the university.

Property developer Stephen Ross has also poured billions of dollars into office towers, condominiums, retail centers and schools in West Palm Beach, Fla., about 70 miles north of Miami. He also helped recruit Vanderbilt University’s graduate campus to West Palm Beach. That program has raised about $400 million from donations. It recently doubled its planned student population to 2,000, and the school will focus on defense tech, finance, space tech and national-security studies when it opens in 2029.

While Carnegie Mellon operates satellite campuses in New York City; Mountain View, Calif.; and Qatar, serving up to a few hundred students each, Miami will be its largest expansion by far. The university projects the campus eventually will support more than 3,500 undergraduate, master’s and Ph.D. students, nearly 300 faculty and over 600 staff members.

“Miami is an area in which Carnegie Mellon can reinvent not only what students learn, but how they learn,” said Farnam Jahanian, president of Carnegie Mellon.

Carnegie Mellon Miami will focus on human health and biological discovery, national security and strategic capabilities, energy and climate resilience, and advanced manufacturing and industrial transformation, making it a good fit with the region’s burgeoning defense tech and healthcare industries. Interdisciplinary programs will integrate artificial intelligence, computing, and machine learning alongside CMU’s humanities, fine arts and design disciplines.

Carnegie Mellon’s new Miami campus will sit on a roughly 30-acre site purchased from developer Moishe Mana for $1.1 billion, according to a press release. Details about who ultimately will hold the deed to the 35-acre property weren’t made public.

Construction is slated to begin in 2027, with the campus aiming to enroll its first students in 2028.

The Miami campus will host industry research labs and venture studios, so that students, faculty and industry and community partners can build technologies alongside one another.

When the original university was founded by Andrew Carnegie, the aim was to create a hands-on environment for students to apply their knowledge to industrial challenges and real-world problem solving.

The new Carnegie Mellon campus will sit blocks from Griffin’s other major investment in the neighborhood, where he joined with Goldman Properties to acquire an office tower from Chicago-based developer Sterling Bay, for $180 million.

That building boasts a heavy financial, tech and arts presence, serving as home to MIAX Sapphire’s 38,400 square-foot options trading floor, alongside tenants like PwC, Gensler and Sony Music.

The trading floor opened in September last year, the first national securities exchange trading floor in Miami. It is the second open-outcry trading floor to open in the U.S. in roughly half a century—a physical trading floor, where pit traders cry out to each other verbally or using hand signals, versus a purely algorithmic data center with quant engineers watching the ledger remotely. Citadel Securities itself is one of the market-makers participating on that trading floor.

“The thinking is so big, matched with a financial commitment of historic proportions, you just know that the scale of the outcome will be breathtaking,” said Jessica Goldman Srebnick, the co-chair of Goldman Properties, a pioneer developer in the neighborhood.

Chanel takes first dip into trophies with Boat Race designs

The UK rowing contest’s title sponsor is replicating the unisex approach of its J12 watch with the men’s and women’s cups

Chanel has extended its involvement in the Boat Race, the annual rowing contest between Oxford and Cambridge universities and one of Britain’s oldest sporting events, by creating the competition’s first trophies since becoming its title sponsor.

Unveiled today at the ceremonial Presidents’ Challenge event at London’s Somerset House, the matching men’s and women’s trophies are the latest part of a sponsorship that has already put Chanel’s J12 — one of the French luxury house’s most important watch models — at the centre of the race as its official timekeeper.

“These trophies are the first in our history and they are an expression of our long-term commitment to the Boat Race,” says Frédéric Grangié, president of Chanel watches and fine jewellery.

Chanel’s sponsorship — which was announced in 2024 and took effect last year — is expected to run until at least 2029, encompassing the women’s race centenary in 2027 and the men’s 200th anniversary two years later.

Designed by Arnaud Chastaingt, director of Chanel’s watch creation studio, and made in the UK by London silversmith Thomas Lyte, the trophies combine a traditional sterling silver cup with a rectangular aluminium frame — white for the women’s competition and black for the men’s.

The colour scheme deliberately references the J12, which Chanel introduced in black ceramic in 2000 and subsequently in white. The watch gives its name to what is now officially the Chanel J12 Boat Race, linking the sponsorship directly to the house’s watch business.

Over the two years spent developing the trophies, Chastaingt used the design process to familiarise himself with the race and its traditions, travelling to the UK to meet event organisers, examine previous trophies and speak to the crews about what they meant to them. Those included cups made by British silversmiths Nicholas Winton and Rod Kelly. He also considered the practical requirements of a trophy which needed to be strong but not too heavy, substantial in size but also comfortable to hold. “It was not simply about designing a beautiful object. It was about giving form to a moment of achievement that belongs to many people,” he adds.

For both Grangié and Chastaingt, it was important to draw on British craftsmanship, given both the race’s history and the country’s centuries-old silversmithing tradition. Thomas Lyte, which holds a royal warrant as silversmith to the King, was brought in to translate Chastaingt’s design into the finished trophies.

The practical challenges of bringing the design’s cup-within-a-frame form were obvious from the first meeting between Chastaingt and Thomas Lyte’s master silversmiths. “We realised we first had to make the central classic trophy, using all the usual skills of spinning and casting, silversmithing and polishing,” says Kevin Baker, Thomas Lyte’s chief executive.

The next step turned traditional craftsmanship techniques on their head. The company’s craftsmen had to cut each 50cm-high cup in half before inserting them into each side of the aluminium frame while preserving the cup’s structural integrity. “We have made thousands of trophies, but we have never cut one in half before,” says Baker.

A total of 120 fixings were required to connect the structures, with Thomas Lyte creating specially made tools to access intricate areas, such as around the handles and lid. An additional challenge presented itself in seamlessly connecting elements made from two entirely different metals, handworked silver with tolerances of 1mm-1.5mm, and engineered aluminium that has tolerances of thousandths of millimetres.

“There was a whole cycle of creating the different handmade elements to make sure they fitted within the frame,” says Baker, who adds that it took more than 320 hours at the bench to complete each cup.

Grangié and Chastaingt were also keen that the cups should be completed in time for the centenary next year of the first women’s race. “[It] gives the project an even stronger resonance. Celebrating women’s performance and determination naturally echoes values that are very close to Chanel’s DNA,” says Chastaingt.

The trophies come as Chanel continues to spend heavily on promoting and developing its brand. The privately owned luxury group reported revenues of $19.3bn in 2025, up 2 per cent, and operating profit of $4.7bn, up 5 per cent. It invested almost $2.4bn during the year in brand activities including client engagement.

To Grangié, the cups reflect founder Gabrielle Chanel’s creation of a contemporary, often androgynous, look for women in the early 20th century. In the spirit of gender equality in modern sporting events, the two cups are of equal size.

Siobhan Cassidy, chair of The Boat Race Company, which receives money from commercial deals associated with the contest, says the race was ahead of its time in this perspective. “Since 2015, the women’s race has received the same funding, been raced on the same course and received the same level of broadcast coverage as the men’s,” she says.

The cups also nod to the brand’s creation of the J12 watch. This unisex style was created in ceramic at a time when the material was not widely used in watchmaking. Initially dismissed by some traditionalists, it is now considered a classic of its time by fans and critics alike. “It is always our creative vision that leads the journey,” says Grangié.

Chastaingt agrees: “[Whether I am] creating a Chanel watch, or creating the Boat Race trophy, my objective is absolutely the same: to create an emotion."

Kremlin accuses western defence alliance of preparing to blockade Russian exclave on Baltic Sea

Russia has threatened to use nuclear weapons against Nato countries if the western military alliance were to hinder access to its Baltic Sea exclave of Kaliningrad.

In a document sent to Nato this week, Moscow accused the alliance of taking a “dangerous and reckless course” towards Russia and its exclave, according to two officials familiar with the matter. The officials said it included a warning about “high risks of the outbreak of a direct armed conflict”.

Nato responded by accusing Moscow of “irresponsible nuclear rhetoric” and said it posed no threat to Russia.

Moscow claimed Nato was preparing for potential military operations to blockade Kaliningrad, the Russian exclave bordering Poland and Lithuania, citing the defence alliance’s exercises in the region and the Baltic Sentry mission to protect undersea infrastructure.

“Russia will be ready to use the entire arsenal of forces and capabilities at its disposal, including nuclear weapons, in order to defend its territory should Nato countries undertake any attempt aimed at isolating the Kaliningrad Region from the rest of the country,” the document stated.

Such moves could result in “Russian strikes against decision-making centres in the alliance’s member states right from the outset of the conflict”, it warned.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters it was “totally natural that our diplomats are trying to remind hotheads in Europe about our foundational documents on this issue”, according to Interfax.

The Russian statements were in part a response to recent coverage of Kaliningrad in the UK media, including a documentary on Sky News about a fictional war-gaming exercise.

“I can confirm that Russia sent a non-paper to Nato and that we have sent a response, noting that Nato is a defensive alliance and none of our activities or exercises pose a risk to any part of Russia,” said alliance spokesperson Allison Hart. “We strongly denounce the threat of force, including any irresponsible nuclear rhetoric.”

“Russia’s use of hybrid tactics is a sign of desperation. But we will not be dissuaded from our support to Ukraine,” Hart added. “We have what it takes to defend every inch of Allied territory and remain strong, ready and able to counter any threat.”

Kaliningrad has long been a source of tension between Russia and Nato, given its strategic location on the Baltic Sea, and the potential for Russia to cut off the three Baltic states from the rest of their Nato allies if they were to annex a land corridor between the exclave and its military ally Belarus.

Russia maintains a large naval fleet in the exclave and a wide range of missiles capable of striking the vast majority of Nato capitals, including nuclear-capable Iskander missiles.

The nuclear threats come as Belgium’s defence minister Theo Francken warned of a “dark winter” ahead as a result of Russia’s continuing campaign of hybrid attacks on Europe.

“There will be more hybrid threat actions in the coming months. It will be a dark winter for Europe,” Francken said on Wednesday.

“Hybrid warfare is not something that Russia has started since two to three years,” he added. “They have been doing it for 50 years. This is something that [President Vladimir] Putin is very good at .”