Wall Street titan’s death leaves family at war

One of Wall Street's most famous titans, Lionel Pincus, founder of the buyout company Warburg Pincus, has died in New York at the age of 78, leaving behind him a nasty legal wrangle over the $50m 'master of the universe' apartment he shared at the top of the Pierre hotel with his glamorous girlfriend, Princess Firyal of Jordan.

Friends of the princess say she has been the love of Pincus's life since his wife, Suzanne Storrs Poulton, died in 1995. "They lived together since 1996," one friend told reporters. "She made him very happy."

But his two sons, Matthew and Henry Pincus, went to court in August in an effort to prevent Firyal (above right) from inheriting the duplex apartment. The case was still pending when their father finally died on Saturday after a long battle with cancer.

Lionel Pincus (above left) had been declared mentally incapacitated in 2006, and although he and the princess had been living together for a decade, his sons wanted her out of the apartment so that they could sell it and, so they claimed, give the proceeds to charity.

When the princess refused to move out, the Pincus brothers decided to sue. As well as demanding that she quit the apartment, they accused her of spending millions of their father's fortune on furnishings, including a $750,000 pair of pottery horses and a $132,000 desk.

It is unclear what will happen now: according to court papers, Princess Firyal stood to inherit the duplex if Pincus still owned it at the time of his death.

Firyal's friends point out that neither brother has financial worries, having already had hundred million dollar trust funds bestowed on them, as well as an estate on Long Island and a ranch in Utah: "They've made her out to be a gold-digger, when they are both silver-spoon trust-funders."

Warburg Pincus was formed when Pincus's venture capital company bought up EM Warburg & Co in 1966. Since then, the company has invested more than $29 billion in 600 companies, including Inspire Pharmaceuticals and Fidelity National Information Services. ·