Billion-dollar battle: Part 11, with a whimper?
[
1, starting gun, 2, opening bets, 3, what’s at stake
4, paging the cavalry, 5, must the public pay?,
6, orchestra warms up, 7, unpublished score, 8, hidden free riders
9, the selling banns, 10, the residents’ imperatives.]
The New York Times announcement of the
MetLife Inc. said Friday it had finalized the sale of the
After having made several brave predictions that the tussle would be protracted, I’m very surprised at this result. What made it happen the way it did, and so quickly? Four things:
1. Speed. The sellers worked at warp speed. The sellers and their advisors correctly realized that the shorter the public scrutiny period, the better for them. When they issued the offering prospectus, they established an incredibly short timetable. (One may infer they had done a mountain of pre-offering data assembly so as to accelerate the buyers’ due diligence.)
“Captain, you’re selling so quickly it’s blown your eyebrows back.”
Once the bids were in, the sellers continued to move at a breakneck pace, picking a buyer, hammering out the deal, and sprinting to a closing, all at a pace much, much faster than one would ordinarily expect. It’s almost as if they suspected that slowing down would risk the transaction.
2. Price high. The buyers bid high. Having anchored the marketplace at $5.0 billion, MetLife must have been ecstatic to see the global hunger for American real estate bid the price up above the ask (almost unheard of in commercial situations) to $5.4 billion. All cash, too. That was a don’t-think-twice-close-it-before-things-change offer.
Five point four bill, all cash, get it?
3. Elected-official indifference. Despite extensive efforts by the residents and their local champion, city councilor Daniel R. Garodnick, no potent elected officials took up the cause. The clout-wielders were conspicuously silent. And by purest coincidence (Freud: “there are no coincidences”) …
“Are you simply projecting Machiavellian actions to cover up for your own predictive inadequacies,
… MetLife timed its sales window to hit right in the sweet spot of an election cycle, during which the race for governor preoccupied Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, who might otherwise have been the tenants’ foe. Whether because of elections gubernatorial or otherwise, no national
(Or might it have been also that the elected officials knew
4. The residents’ bid was too low. Given the short time available, and the tepid political response from their potential champions, the residents’ offer — $4.5 billion with some contingencies, and predicated on a partial conversion to occupant ownership — was quite responsive and credible. Had the for-profit offers come in below $5.0 billion, and had the elected officials been more vocal, things might have been different. As it was, the residents failed to derail MetLife’s aggressive timetable, and that sealed the fate of their bid.
Is it really done? Is that it?
Is it really?
The residents have one last throw of the dice:
This week, the tenants asked the city comptroller to investigate the sale, saying MetLife had not officially terminated the redevelopment company that managed the complex, as is required by state housing law.
For the residents, the problem is that a comptroller is not a judge who can order an injunction, and once the property is sold, it would be remarkable indeed if a court then ordered it unsold.
The comptroller is reviewing the complaint, but a MetLife spokesman called the move ”a last-minute, desperate attempt to interfere with a legitimate sale.”
If MetLife is now out of the picture, what do the new owners have in store? How have they announced themselves? The most recent news listed (12/3/06) on the
2006 PCV/ST Art Show Winners
The 2006 show had 46 entries. The wide range of artwork entered were photographs, oil paints, watercolors, pencil and inks and even an entry of stained glass.
Bleeding hearts?
Not with a bang but a whimper.
