Jerry Speyer and Robert De Niro are connected through the National September 11 Memorial & Museum, where both are listed as founding trustees on the current board, and both also appeared on the memorial foundation’s 2004 board list.
They are not relatives, and no reliable public record shows that they own a company together. Speyer is chairperson of the real estate firm Tishman Speyer, while De Niro is a two-time Oscar-winning actor and Cofounder of the Tribeca Festival. This guide was last checked in October 2026.
Every fact below comes from official pages, company releases or major news reports. Anything that changes over time carries a date, so you can judge how fresh it is.
Quick Answer and Key Facts
If you only have thirty seconds, this table covers what most searchers want to know.
| Detail | Jerry Speyer | Robert De Niro |
| Born | June 23, 1940, Milwaukee, Wisconsin | August 17, 1943, New York City |
| Age in October 2026 | 86 | 83 |
| Known for | Cofounder and chairman of Tishman Speyer | Actor, producer, cofounder of the Tribeca Festival |
| Signature New York places | Rockefeller Center, Chrysler Building | Tribeca Grill, The Greenwich Hotel, Tribeca Festival |
| Shared institution | 9/11 Memorial & Museum, founding trustee | 9/11 Memorial & Museum, founding trustee |
One small correction worth knowing: some profiles still show Speyer as 85. He was born in June 1940, so he turned 86 this year.
What Is the Connection Between Jerry Speyer and Robert De Niro?
The connection is institutional and civic. It is not a family tie, and it is not a business partnership. Two very different New Yorkers, one from real estate and one from film, ended up serving the same memorial institution at the World Trade Center site.
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Both Are Founding Trustees of the 9/11 Memorial & Museum
The memorial’s current Board of Trustees page lists Robert De Niro and Jerry I. Speyer. The page uses an asterisk to mark founding trustees, and both names carry it. The memorial plaza opened in 2011, and the museum followed in May 2014, so these two were part of the effort that built the place, not later additions to a finished board.
The Link Goes Back to 2004
A City of New York document lists the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation board as of December 1, 2004. De Niro appears there with his Tribeca Film Institute affiliation, and Speyer appears with Tishman Speyer Properties. That means the shared board service is more than twenty years old, which most articles on this topic miss because they rely on a single annual report.
Who Else Sits on the Same Board?
The trustee list is a mix of business, entertainment, media and civic leaders. It includes De Niro’s longtime Tribeca partner Jane Rosenthal, Daniel R. Tishman (a member of the family behind the original Tishman real estate business), comedian Billy Crystal, broadcaster and comedian Jon Stewart, and Disney’s Robert Iger. Board pages change over time, so check the live page before quoting a current roster.
A seat on a memorial board is a governance and fundraising role. It puts people from unrelated industries in the same room for one shared purpose. That is a very different thing from owning a company together.
Timeline: How Their Paths Overlapped, 2001 to 2026
Here is how the two stories line up year by year.
- 1978: Jerry Speyer and his Lawfather-in-law Robert Tishman founded Tishman Speyer.
- December 2000: Tishman Speyer and the Crown family of Chicago agree to buy out their partners in Rockefeller Center at a valuation of 1.85 billion dollars. Title was expected to pass in spring 2001.
- 2001: After the September 11 attacks, De Niro, Jane Rosenthal and Craig Hatkoff start the Tribeca Festival to help bring life back to Lower Manhattan.
- 2002: The first Tribeca Film Festival takes place.
- 2004: De Niro and Speyer both appear on the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation board list.
- 2011 and 2014: The 9/11 Memorial opens in 2011, and the museum opens in 2014.
- 2015: Rob Speyer becomes sole CEO of Tishman Speyer, with his father staying on as chairman.
- 2019: James Murdoch’s Lupa Systems buys a majority stake in Tribeca Enterprises.
- 2026: Tribeca marks its 25th edition in June, The Whisper Man arrives on Netflix in August, Tishman Speyer retakes the Chrysler Building in October, and both men remain on the memorial’s trustee page.
Are Jerry Speyer and Robert De Niro Related, Friends, or Business Partners?
This is the question behind most searches for these two names, so here is the plain answer for each version of it.
Are They Related?
No reliable public record shows any family relationship. Speyer’s family story runs through the Tishman family, his marriages and his children. De Niro’s runs through his father, the painter Robert De Niro Sr., and his own family. The two do not cross.
Are They Business Partners?
No jointly owned company has been found. Tishman Speyer’s leadership page lists Jerry Speyer as chairman and Rob Speyer as CEO. Tribeca Enterprises describes its ownership group as Rosenthal, De Niro and Lupa Systems. Those are separate businesses with separate owners.
Are They Friends?
Public sources document shared board service, not a private friendship. Any article that claims a close personal bond without naming a source is guessing.
Claims You May See Online and What the Record Shows
- Claim: They own Rockefeller Center together. Record: Tishman Speyer and the Crown family bought it, and De Niro was not part of that deal.
- Claim: Speyer helped found the Tribeca Festival. Record: Official Tribeca materials name De Niro, Rosenthal and Hatkoff as the founders.
- Claim: Their connection is only that both are New Yorkers. Record: The board listings show a specific, documented overlap.
Who Is Jerry Speyer?
Jerry I. Speyer is an American real estate developer and one of the two founding partners of Tishman Speyer. He was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and grew up in Manhattan in a German Jewish household on Riverside Drive.
Early Life, Education and Career
Speyer earned a degree from Columbia College in 1962 and an MBA from Columbia Business School in 1964. He began his career that same year as an assistant to a vice president at Madison Square Garden. In 1978, he formed Tishman Speyer with his father-in-law, Robert Tishman, who died in October 2010.
Tishman Speyer: From 1978 to Today
Tishman Speyer is headquartered at 45 Rockefeller Plaza. Jerry Speyer served as chief executive for decades, shared the role with his son Rob for seven years, and handed Rob the sole CEO title in 2015 while remaining chairman. Joseph Doran is the firm’s chief financial officer. Industry profiles that cite the firm’s own figures put its assets under management at roughly 70 billion dollars as of early 2026.
Rockefeller Center and Other Landmark Properties
Rockefeller Center is the property most tied to Speyer’s name. Tishman Speyer was already part of the 1996 partnership that bought the complex out of financial trouble and managed it. In December 2000, the firm and the Crown family agreed to buy out the other partners, including the Rockefeller, Goldman Sachs Whitehall Fund, Agnelli and Niarchos interests, at a valuation of 1.85 billion dollars.
The Chrysler Building has a longer and more dramatic story. Tishman Speyer first got involved in 1997, paying about 220 million dollars as part of a deal that extended the Cooper Union land lease for 150 years.
The firm later sold most of its stake. In October 2026, it came back, signing a new 150-year ground lease with Cooper Union and paying 235 million dollars, backed by institutional investors led by PSP Investments, with plans to renovate the offices and common areas. Industry profiles also associate the firm with the MetLife Building.
Not every deal went well. The 2006 purchase of Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village for about 5.4 billion dollars became a costly setback for the firm.
Jerry Speyer Net Worth
Forbes figures reported by The Real Deal put Speyer at 3 billion dollars in 2012, 3.5 billion in 2013 and 4 billion in 2014. A Bisnow real estate list in 2016 showed 4.4 billion dollars, and he appeared on the Forbes 400 in 2021. We could not confirm a current Forbes figure, and many net worth sites repeat unreliable numbers, so treat any exact 2026 total with caution. His wealth comes from a private company, which is why estimates vary.
Jerry Speyer Family
Speyer married Lynn Tishman in 1964, and they divorced in 1987. In 1991, he married Katherine Farley, who joined Tishman Speyer in 1984 and later took on leadership roles at nonprofits including Lincoln Center and the International Rescue Committee, according to a Bisnow profile. His children include Valerie Speyer Peltier, Rob Speyer, Holly Speyer Lipton and Laura Speyer. Rob joined the family firm in 1995 and became the youngest chair of the Real Estate Board of New York in 2012.
Civic Roles and Art Collecting
Speyer chairs NewYork Presbyterian Hospital and is chairman emeritus of the Museum of Modern Art. He is a former chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and of the Columbia University trustees. He also serves on the board of Yankee Global Enterprises, the Kennedy Center Corporate Fund Board and the Städel Museum in Frankfurt, and he is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. His contemporary art collection includes work by artists such as Damien Hirst, Jeff Koons, Frank Stella and Takashi Murakami.
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Who Is Robert De Niro?
Robert De Niro is a two-time Academy Award winner, born in New York City on August 17, 1943. He turned 83 this year.
Early Life and New York Roots
His father, Robert De Niro Sr., was an Abstract Expressionist painter whose Greenwich Village loft drew artists and writers of the era. De Niro studied acting under Stella Adler and Lee Strasberg, then broke through in 1973 with Bang the Drum Slowly and Mean Streets, the first of his many films with Martin Scorsese.
Career, Scorsese and Academy Awards
Francis Ford Coppola cast De Niro as the young Vito Corleone in The Godfather Part II without a screen test, and the performance earned him the Best Supporting Actor Oscar. His second Oscar, for Best Actor, came for playing Jake LaMotta in Raging Bull.
He has also been nominated for Taxi Driver, The Deer Hunter, Awakenings, Cape Fear, Silver Linings Playbook and Killers of the Flower Moon, and The Irishman was nominated for Best Picture with him among its producers. In 2025, he received an honorary Palme d’Or at Cannes, presented by Leonardo DiCaprio.
Business Ventures: Tribeca Productions, Restaurants and Hotels
With Jane Rosenthal, De Niro runs Tribeca Productions. He also helped create the Tribeca Film Center in a former coffee warehouse, opened Tribeca Grill, became a shareholder in Nobu with chef Nobu Matsuhisa and Meir Teper, and co-owns The Greenwich Hotel, which opened in 2008 at 377 Greenwich Street and houses Locanda Verde. He has said he bought the hotel’s lot because it sat right next to the film center.
Robert De Niro Net Worth
No official source gives an exact figure. A widely repeated estimate sits around 500 million dollars, but we could not trace it to a current Forbes list, so read it as an approximation rather than a fact.
Latest Projects in 2026
The Whisper Man, a crime thriller based on Alex North’s novel and directed by James Ashcroft, started streaming on Netflix on August 28, 2026, and received mixed reviews from critics. Focker In Law, the fourth film in the Fockers series, is scheduled for November 25, 2026.
Robert De Niro, Tribeca and the Tribeca Festival
Why Tribeca Matters to De Niro
Tribeca is where his businesses, his production company and his festival sit within a few blocks of each other. Travel writers have called him the neighborhood’s patron saint, and his film center, restaurants and hotel all helped shape its modern identity.
Festival Origins After 9/11
Tribeca’s official materials say De Niro, Rosenthal and Hatkoff founded the festival in 2001 to support the economic and cultural revival of Lower Manhattan after the attacks. The first festival ran in May 2002.
De Niro has described the launch as a race of about 120 days, and the opening edition was a five-day showcase of 150 films chosen from 13,000 submissions. Some sources give 2001 and others 2002 because the idea began in 2001 and the first festival was held in 2002.
From Local Event to International Platform
The festival now covers film, television, music, podcasts, games and immersive work. In 2020, it dropped “Film” from its name, and the pandemic cancelled that year’s in-person edition. The 25th edition ran from June 3 to 14, 2026, with 118 feature films, an award for Bruce Springsteen and a public conversation between De Niro and Rosenthal on June 11—a Netflix documentary, Tribeca 25, followed on September 11, 2026.
Real Estate vs Culture: Two Ways of Shaping New York
Speyer shapes the buildings people work and shop in. De Niro shapes the events and places people gather for. Both approaches matter to a city’s recovery, which is why the 9/11 Memorial board brings them together.
| Jerry Speyer | Robert De Niro | |
| Main tool | Commercial real estate | Film, hospitality, festivals |
| Landmark examples | Rockefeller Center, Chrysler Building | Tribeca Festival, Greenwich Hotel |
| Civic role | Hospital, museum and memorial boards | Memorial board, fundraising, Tribeca |
| Shared institution | 9/11 Memorial & Museum | 9/11 Memorial & Museum |
A One Day Visitor Route
If you are visiting New York, you can see both men’s marks in a single day. Start at Rockefeller Center, where Top of the Rock offers views across Manhattan. Then head downtown to the 9/11 Memorial and Museum, whose reflecting pools sit in the footprints of the Twin Towers. Finish in Tribeca on Greenwich Street, where Tribeca Grill and Locanda Verde are close to The Greenwich Hotel.
Philanthropy and Civic Work Compared
Speyer’s civic work runs through large institutions: a hospital, the Museum of Modern Art, Columbia and the memorial. De Niro’s runs through the memorial’s fundraising and through Tribeca. He and Rosenthal co-chaired the memorial’s Signs of Support campaign, which asked businesses to contribute and listed supporters on the memorial’s website and at its preview site. The causes overlap, but the tools are different.
Latest News, October 2026
- October 2026: Tishman Speyer retakes the Chrysler Building through a 150-year ground lease with Cooper Union, paying 235 million dollars.
- August 28, 2026: The Whisper Man begins streaming on Netflix with De Niro, Michelle Monaghan and Adam Scott.
- August 17, 2026: De Niro turns 83.
- November 25, 2026: Focker In Law is scheduled for release.
- 2026 overall: Tribeca celebrates its 25th anniversary, and both men remain on the 9/11 Memorial trustee page.
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Conclusion
The verified story is simple. Jerry Speyer and Robert De Niro are not family and not business partners. Their documented link is shared service as founding trustees of the 9/11 Memorial & Museum, a connection that goes back to at least 2004.
Speyer built his reputation through Tishman Speyer, Rockefeller Center and the Chrysler Building. De Niro built his through acting, Tribeca and the festival he helped create.
FAQ’s About Jerry Speyer and Robert De Niro
Are Jerry Speyer and Robert De Niro related?
No reliable public record shows a family relationship.
Are Jerry Speyer and Robert De Niro business partners?
No jointly owned company has been found. Their businesses are separate.
What do Jerry Speyer and Robert De Niro have in common?
Both are New Yorkers who built careers in different fields, and both serve as founding trustees of the 9/11 Memorial & Museum.
Are both on the 9/11 Memorial board?
Yes. The memorial’s Board of Trustees page lists both with founding trustee markers, and a 2004 city document shows both on the foundation’s board.
Is Jerry Speyer still CEO of Tishman Speyer?
No. Rob Speyer has been sole CEO since 2015, and Jerry is chairman.
How old are Jerry Speyer and Robert De Niro?
In October 2026, Speyer is 86, and De Niro is 83.
Is Robert De Niro alive?
Yes. He turned 83 on August 17, 2026, and attended the New York premiere of The Whisper Man in August. False death rumors about him circulate online from time to time.
What is Jerry Speyer’s net worth?
Forbes reported 4 billion dollars in 2014, and Bisnow listed 4.4 billion in 2016. We could not confirm a current figure.
What is Robert De Niro’s connection to Tribeca?
He cofounded the Tribeca Festival with Jane Rosenthal and Craig Hatkoff, and he also owns businesses in the neighborhood.
