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Title: General Growth Properties [Mall Operator] Files for Bankruptcy
Source:
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URL Source: http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2 ... s-for-bankruptcy/?ref=business
Published: Apr 16, 2009
Author: Michael dela Merced
Post Date: 2009-04-16 07:48:14 by DeaconBenjamin
Keywords: None
Views: 168
Comments: 4
General Growth Properties, one of the largest mall operators in the nation, filed for bankruptcy early Thursday morning in one of the biggest commercial real estate collapses in United States history. Despite bargaining for months with its creditors, General Growth faced increasing pressure to handle its more than $25 billion in debt, largely in the form of short-term mortgages that will come due by next year. The company has been severely wounded by the recession, which has wreaked havoc upon the retailers who inhabit its more than 200 malls in 44 states. Many stores have shuttered, depriving mall operators like General Growth of revenue. The filing by the Chicago-based company, made in federal bankruptcy court in Manhattan, included most of the company’s malls, which will continue to operate. General Growth’s reorganization efforts will likely focus on selling off properties. It has already suspended its stock dividend, cut its workforce by 20 percent and stopped virtually all new development. “Our operational model is sound,” Thomas H. Nolan Jr., the company’s president and chief operating officer, said on a conference call early Thursday morning, citing “the unprecedented disruption in the real estate financing markets and the need to extend maturing debt” as the reason the company filed. “We made extensive efforts to modify existing maturing debt outstide of bankruptcy,” he added. What began as a crisis in residential real estate has since seeped into the commercial real estate market, as landlords of retail and office space face rising numbers of vacancies. Analysts expect many of these companies to struggle as the recession forces steep cuts in consumer spending and employment rolls. As the second-biggest operator of malls in the nation, behind only the Simon Property Group, General Growth’s troubles have been closely watched by the real estate and retail industry for months. Founded in 1954 and grown through a series of acquisitions — topped by a $12.6 billion deal for the Rouse Company in 2004 — the company’s huge retail presence has served as a barometer for the ails bedeviling the American retail market. As more stores have closed, mall vacancies are at their highest point in almost a decade, according to Reis, a research company, which said the vacancy rate at the end of 2008 was 7.1 percent, compared with 5.8 percent at the end of 2007. That has left many of the roughly 1,500 malls in the United States groping for a solution — any solution — to their woes. Some have converted retail space into office space. Still others have drastically lowered rents for prized tenants, willing to cut deals to simply keep earning revenue. Some have simply gone dark. Shares in General Growth, which closed on Wednesday at $1.05, have fallen 97 percent over the past 12 months. General Growth’s filing also marks a humbling of the Bucksbaum family, which grew the company from a family grocery business in Marshalltown, Iowa into a powerhouse of retail shopping in the Midwest. It still holds about a 25 percent stake in the company, and John Bucksbaum, an avid cyclist, remains its chairman after having served as its chief executive. Few analysts dispute the quality of General Growth’s malls, which include the Ala Moana Center in Honolulu, Water Tower Place in Chicago and the Grand Canal Shoppes at the Venetian in Las Vegas. But its undoing was the mounting pile of short-term mortgages the operator used to expand. That financing strategy was devised by its longtime chief financial officer, Bernard Freibaum, who was dismissed last October. Since then, the mall owner has pleaded with holders of $2.25 billion in bonds to hold off on demanding payment as it sought to reorganize its debt outside of a bankruptcy filing. But bondholders grew increasingly impatient as bond maturities continued to mount and denied General Growth an abstention from payments for the rest of the year. The company said in its statement that it has secured a commitment for $375 million in bankruptcy financing from Pershing Square Capital Management, the hedge fund that owns more than 25 percent of the company through its holdings of shares and swap contracts. That financing must be approved by a bankruptcy court judge. William A. Ackman, the head of Pershing Square, told Bloomberg Television last month that he foresaw an “imminent” bankruptcy filing by the company. Among the companies listed as General Growth’s 100 largest unsecured creditors are Eurohypo, a unit of Germany’s Commerzbank that holds $2.6 billion worth of loans; Wilmington Trust and the Bank of New York Mellon representing several classes of bonds; casinos including Mandalay Bay and the Venetian; and an assortment of retailers like Sephora, Guess?, Borders and Macys. In its bankruptcy filing, General Growth said that it sought permission to retain a bevy of advisers, including the investment bank Miller Buckfire, the turnaround consulting firm AlixPartners and the law firms Weil, Gotshal & Manges and Kirkland & Ellis. The document was signed by Marcia L. Goldstein, the chair of Weil’s well-known bankruptcy practice.
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#1. To: DeaconBenjamin (#0)
When I was a teenager I lived in the St. Louis area, and about the only mall at that time was Northwest Plaza, which was the largest outdoor mall in the world. Then they enclosed it. Then malls stared springing up all over the place. Then NW Plaza starting really going downhill. Then there were some shooting by minorities. It's still there, but a shell of its former self. The just couldn't stop. Mall after mall after mall. I don't go to malls. I shop at small, locally-owned stores, where I know the owners and employees.
freedom4um.com/cgi-bin/readart.cgi?ArtNum=90652 Title: Celente Predicts Revolution, Food Riots, Tax Rebellions By 2012 Source: [None] URL Source: www.infowars.com/?p=5938 Published: Nov 13, 2008 Author: Paul Joseph Watson Post Date: 2008-11-13 12:36:22 by christine The man who predicted the 1987 stock market crash and the fall of the Soviet Union is now forecasting revolution in America, food riots and tax rebellions - all within four years, while cautioning that putting food on the table will be a more pressing concern than buying Christmas gifts by 2012. Gerald Celente, the CEO of Trends Research Institute, is renowned for his accuracy in predicting future world and economic events, which will send a chill down your spine considering what he told Fox News this week. Celente says that by 2012 America will become an undeveloped nation, that there will be a revolution marked by food riots, squatter rebellions, tax revolts and job marches, and that holidays will be more about obtaining food, not gifts. “We’re going to see the end of the retail Christmas….we’re going to see a fundamental shift take place….putting food on the table is going to be more important that putting gifts under the Christmas tree,” said Celente, adding that the situation would be “worse than the great depression”. “America’s going to go through a transition the likes of which no one is prepared for,” said Celente, noting that people’s refusal to acknowledge that America was even in a recession highlights how big a problem denial is in being ready for the true scale of the crisis. Celente, who successfully predicted the 1997 Asian Currency Crisis, the subprime mortgage collapse and the massive devaluation of the U.S. dollar, told UPI in November last year that the following year would be known as “The Panic of 2008,” adding that “giants (would) tumble to their deaths,” which is exactly what we have witnessed with the collapse of Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns and others. He also said that the dollar would eventually be devalued by as much as 90 per cent. The consequence of what we have seen unfold this year would lead to a lowering in living standards, Celente predicted a year ago, which is also being borne out by plummeting retail sales figures. The prospect of revolution was a concept echoed by a British Ministry of Defence report last year, which predicted that within 30 years, the growing gap between the super rich and the middle class, along with an urban underclass threatening social order would mean, “The world’s middle classes might unite, using access to knowledge, resources and skills to shape transnational processes in their own class interest,” and that, “The middle classes could become a revolutionary class.” In a separate recent interview, Celente went further on the subject of revolution in America. “There will be a revolution in this country,” he said. “It’s not going to come yet, but it’s going to come down the line and we’re going to see a third party and this was the catalyst for it: the takeover of Washington, D. C., in broad daylight by Wall Street in this bloodless coup. And it will happen as conditions continue to worsen.” “The first thing to do is organize with tax revolts. That’s going to be the big one because people can’t afford to pay more school tax, property tax, any kind of tax. You’re going to start seeing those kinds of protests start to develop.” “It’s going to be very bleak. Very sad. And there is going to be a lot of homeless, the likes of which we have never seen before. Tent cities are already sprouting up around the country and we’re going to see many more.” “We’re going to start seeing huge areas of vacant real estate and squatters living in them as well. It’s going to be a picture the likes of which Americans are not going to be used to. It’s going to come as a shock and with it, there’s going to be a lot of crime. And the crime is going to be a lot worse than it was before because in the last 1929 Depression, people’s minds weren’t wrecked on all these modern drugs – over-the-counter drugs, or crystal meth or whatever it might be. So, you have a huge underclass of very desperate people with their minds chemically blown beyond anybody’s comprehension.” The George Washington blog has compiled a list of quotes attesting to Celente’s accuracy as a trend forecaster. “When CNN wants to know about the Top Trends, we ask Gerald Celente.” — CNN Headline News “A network of 25 experts whose range of specialties would rival many university faculties.” — The Economist “Gerald Celente has a knack for getting the zeitgeist right.” — USA Today “There’s not a better trend forecaster than Gerald Celente. The man knows what he’s talking about.” - CNBC “Those who take their predictions seriously … consider the Trends Research Institute.” — The Wall Street Journal “Gerald Celente is always ahead of the curve on trends and uncannily on the mark … he’s one of the most accurate forecasters around.” — The Atlanta Journal-Constitution “Mr. Celente tracks the world’s social, economic and business trends for corporate clients.” — The New York Times “Mr. Celente is a very intelligent guy. We are able to learn about trends from an authority.” — 48 Hours, CBS News “Gerald Celente has a solid track record. He has predicted everything from the 1987 stock market crash and the demise of the Soviet Union to green marketing and corporate downsizing.” — The Detroit News “Gerald Celente forecast the 1987 stock market crash, ‘green marketing,’ and the boom in gourmet coffees.” — Chicago Tribune “The Trends Research Institute is the Standard and Poors of Popular Culture.” — The Los Angeles Times “If Nostradamus were alive today, he’d have a hard time keeping up with Gerald Celente.” — New York Post So there you have it - hardly a nutjob conspiracy theorist blowhard now is he? The price of not heeding his warnings will be far greater than the cost of preparing for the future now. Storable food and gold are two good places to make a start.
Thank you for being you, TT.
#2. To: DeaconBenjamin (#0)
Dancing Turtles and Bouncing Boobs...that's Turtle Island.
#3. To: Jethro Tull (#1)
#4. To: TwentyTwelve (#3)
"If you love wealth more than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, depart from us in peace. We ask not your counsel nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains rest lightly upon you and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen.”—Samuel Adams 
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