Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Simon Says “Not so Fast”

It appears my previous post about Simon abandoning their quest to acquire General Growth Properties was a tad premature. According to this story by Tiernan Ray in Barron’s, David Simon, the CEO of Simon Property Group, “today offered to recapitalize its smaller rival, General Growth Properties (GGP) with $2.5 billion, in partnership with John Paulson’s Paulson & Co.”

“In a letter to General Growth’s CEO, Adam Metz, Simon Property’s CEO David Simon said his offer was better than Brookfield, Fairholme and Ackman’s proposal, given that Brookfield seems not to have the equity commitment necessary to follow-through on its proposal, whereas Simon Property has sufficient capital to move forward.”

Some have dubbed this the battle of the hedge funds.

The real winners in this battle will be those prescient investors who bought GGP stock a year ago for $.40 a share. Today it is trading at just over $16.00.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

"The real winners in this battle will be those prescient investors who bought GGP stock a year ago for $.40 a share. Today it is trading at just over $16.00."

Ba-da-bing.

And this is the name of the real game, not making Columbia a better place to live. I mean, I think it's pretty cool if you took advantage of this, just sell your property in Columbia now and move some place else, because it won't be worth living there in ten years or so.

Anonymous said...

Anon 10:33 haiku:

That's complete horse sh*t.
We're on our way to greatness,
with or without you.