The deal paid about $50 million in cash. The Promenade Trust also received $25 million in stock in Sillerman’s entertainment company, CKX, and $22 million in debt relief, according to court documents. The Presley family trust kept the remaining 15 percent of Elvis Presley Enterprises and the main Graceland house, appraised at $5.6 million in 2021. The trust leased the house and its core artifacts to Elvis Presley Enterprises under a long-term agreement.
In 2013, Sillerman sold Elvis Presley Enterprises to Authentic Brands Group in partnership with Joel Weinshanker, who now operates Graceland. Three years later, Sillerman’s company declared bankruptcy, rendering Lisa Marie’s CKX stock almost worthless, according to court documents.
And by that time, the $50 million in cash that Lisa Marie’s trust had received was also largely gone, spent on things like a $9 million home in England. In her court papers, Lisa Marie blamed Siegel for allowing that purchase and said he had enriched himself with exorbitant fees and failed to alert her to how dire the financial situation had become.
“By 2016, Siegel had liquidated almost all of the Trust’s remaining principal,” her lawsuit said. “The Trust was left with $14,000 in cash and over $500,000 in credit card debt.”
Meanwhile, Elvis Presley Enterprises was still churning along. Last year, it pulled in $110 million, at least $80 million of which was generated by operations at Graceland, and $5 million of which came from the sale of the rights for the Baz Luhrmann biopic, according to estimates reported by Forbes that were confirmed by two people with knowledge of the company’s finances.
In addition to the $1.25 million she got last year from the trust, Lisa Marie reported receiving a monthly salary of roughly $4,300 as an employee of Graceland, according to a financial filing. (In her 2018 lawsuit against Siegel, Lisa Marie’s lawyers complained that Priscilla had, for years, been paid a $900,000 annual salary by Elvis Presley Enterprises.)
