Back in 2018, David Tepper purchased the Carolina Panthers from Jerry Richardson. Tepper paid a then-record $2.75 billion to take ownership of the team. It was the culmination of a life of hard work and good fortune. Tepper wasn’t born rich, but he worked his way up the finance industry to make enormous amounts of money. He’s given a ton to charities and institutions to help them, and buying the Panthers was supposed to be another avenue for him to turn something around.
Only it hasn’t played out that way at all. Tepper bought the team in May of 2018. They’ve played six seasons under his watch and gone a collective 31-67 with one game remaining in the 2023 season. The team hasn’t had a winning record in a season since Tepper took over, and the Panthers have cycled through six different head coaches during that span.
Carolina’s most recent game was a 26-0 loss to the Jacksonville Jaguars, a team that had lost four games in a row. Toward the end of the blowout, Tepper appeared to throw a drink at Jacksonville fans, which, of course, was captured on video.
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At 2-14, the Panthers have already clinched the worst record in the NFL and the No. 1 draft pick…only they don’t even have their own pick because they traded it to the Chicago Bears to get the No. 1 pick for last year’s draft.
Carolina used that pick on quarterback Bryce Young, who has struggled during his rookie season — though, to be fair, he’s playing without a ton of help around him. In addition to multiple draft picks, the Panthers also traded wide receiver D.J. Moore to the Bears. In response, Moore has had a career-best season in Chicago.
Considering the price Tepper paid for the Panthers, each of the team’s wins has cost him a little more than $88.7 million.
David Tepper gets his revenge
No matter how you look at it, that’s not a great ROI. We don’t want to dwell too much on the negative, though, so let’s look at another time when Tepper spent a ton of money — and it paid off in a major way.
First, some quick backstory: Tepper’s specialty was analyzing the credit of financial institutions. When the stock market crashed in October 1987, Tepper worked at Goldman Sachs, helping the company not only recover from the crash but also make a fortune doing so. He expected to be named a partner at Goldman Sachs, which would come with lucrative benefits. His boss, a man named Jon Corzine, had different ideas, denying him partnership for five years in a row.
Tepper quit Goldman Sachs and eventually started his own mutual fund. He once again put his shrewd knowledge of banks and financial institutions to work, earning $4 billion for himself by the end of 2008. You may remember that year as one of the most tumultuous economic times in U.S. history, yet Tepper persevered.
In the meantime, Corzine and his wife Joanne Dougherty had purchased a 6,000-square-foot beachfront mansion in the Hamptons. For a decade, they spent millions renovating and upgrading the property. However, after Corzine started pursuing a career in politics, the pair grew apart and had a bitter divorce. Dougherty ended up getting the house in the divorce settlement, and in 2010, she sold the home for $43.5 million.
The buyer was Tepper, who demolished the property — including all the work Corzine put into it — to the ground. In its place, Tepper built a mansion twice the size of the original. The entire move was simply to spite Corzine, and it worked perfectly. Corzine was reportedly furious over the whole thing.
Learn more about how David Tepper got the sweetest revenge on his boss.