Herb Simon, the billionaire co-founder of Simon Property Group and majority owner of the Indiana Pacers, filed a lawsuit in July against the family of his nephew David Simon. The suit alleges that his relatives secretly shifted away assets and dissolved a three-decades-old sister company without his permission, stripping him of economic benefits.The family dispute became public after the lawsuit was filed in a Marion County courthouse on July 31.

Herb Simon, 91, cofounded what became Simon Property Group with his brother Mel (d. 2009) and Fred (d. 2019) in 1960 in Indianapolis. Mel’s son, David, was named CEO of Simon Property Group in 1995 at age 33, roughly two years after it went public. He ran it for nearly 31 years, building it into one of the nation’s largest mall developers with more than 250 properties including Woodbury Common Premium Outlets and King of Prussia mall. He was still chairman and CEO right up until his death from pancreatic cancer in March at age 64. Immediately after his passing, the company tapped David’s 38-year-old son Eli, the firm’s chief operating officer, to succeed him as CEO. (Simon Property’s announcement about David’s death and Eli’s promotion does not mention Herb Simon, who was chairman emeritus until 2025 and remains one of the company’s largest individual shareholders.)

At the center of the squabble is SFG, an entity that Herb and Mel set up in August of 1995 to hold the family’s interests in certain real estate properties that did not become part of Simon Property at the time of its IPO.

The lawsuit claims that David—and later Eli—discreetly engineered a corporate reorganization to........

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