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BRAUN BUTTS HEADS WITH EX-ASSOCIATE IN LEGAL BATTLE

Mega-manager Scooter Braun and his former business associate Peter Comisar have crossed swords in dueling lawsuits over the terms of a 2017 deal that created SCOPE Capital Management, a private-equity fund initially bankrolled by Braun. Comisar, a former partner with Goldman Sachs who was an investment-banking executive at Guggenheim Securities, was hired to bring in the additional capital needed to launch the company.

News of the brewing legal battle spread like wildfire late on 6/2 following the appearance of a New York Post story that went into forensic detail on Comisar’s suit but failed to mention Braun’s filing. That oversight was rectified not long thereafter by more evenhanded coverage in Variety.

According to a petition for arbitration filed in L.A. on 6/1 by Braun, who recently sold his company to South Korea’s HYBE (formerly Big Hit) for $1.05 billion, Comisar failed to launch SCOPE, a planned $500m-750m million private-investment firm. Braun’s suit further alleges that Comisar took nearly $5m—close to two years in salary—but raised zero dollars to fund the newco. (The moniker of that proposed venture was a mashup of “Scooter” and “Peter.”)

Comisar alleges in his complaint, also filed on 6/1, that he was promised access to Braun’s network of “close and unique relationships with influential players in entertainment, including David Geffen, Jimmy Iovine and Haim Saban” in order to raise capital for the fund but was rebuffed by these high-rollers, even as Braun “abandoned” the fund.

Braun counters that his commitment beyond the first year was contingent on Comisar having “secured at least $250m in investment commitments” and that getting said commitments wasn’t Braun’s responsibility under the terms of the deal, which protected him “from precisely the type of money grab by Comisar that Braun now confronts.”

On 6/3, Braun intensified his offensive, tweeting, “One day I woke up to find out that a guy who took $5 million from us years ago with zero results has now read a headline of our success and has shown up out of the blue to ask for more money. Got to love a good opportunist. Unfortunately, we don’t scare easy. Wish him well.”

Braun is suing for fraud and requesting arbitration, while Comisar is requesting a jury trial.

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