Commercial Real Estate Finance

Posts Tagged ‘Donald Trump’

Hand over the keys?  More like hand over your chips, Mr. Trump. Andy Beal, head of Beal Bank, called the Donald’s bluff as he feigned interest last week in a joint venture with Beal to buy Trump Entertainment Resorts, the parent company of the troubled Atlantic City casinos Trump Taj Mahal, Trump Plaza and Trump Marina.  After filing for bankruptcy protection for the third time in his overstated real estate career in December 2007, Trump and daughter/business partner Ivanka withdrew their position. Read the rest of this entry »

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The Week of August 1-7

- Commercial real estate prices dropped at a record level int he second quarter, according to some RE nerds.

- LandSource restructured $1.2B in debt, raised $250M in cash, and changed its name as it emerged from bankruptcy.

- Could the World Trade Center rebuilding project go on without developer Silverstein?

- The FDIC has officially begun its legacy loans program. Read the rest of this entry »

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Last week, a report surfaced announcing the return of Mark Walsh (former head of Lehman Brothers global real estate group) to what’s left of Lehman Brothers to take over the crappy portfolio he once amassed during his tenure there. According to an article in the Wall Street Journal:

“Mr. Walsh and a team of former Lehman colleagues are setting up a new stand-alone business to manage the private-equity [real estate] portfolio. They stand to profit if the portfolio of distressed assets — for which they once paid top dollar — recovers only some of its value.”

On the surface, this is about as dumb as asking Dick Cheney the rules of firearm safety, Robert Hinckley Jr. how to assassinate a President, George W. Bush where to find Osama Bin Laden, or Bill Clinton to turn down the advances of unattractive women. Many a joke have been made thus far regarding the news, including outdated Brokeback Mountain jokes (i.e. “Lehman: Mark Walsh, I just can’t quit you” etc).
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Last night, the 2009 MLB baseball season began. No other industry has monetized statistics quite like baseball has, with agents turning homeruns and RBI into dollar bills. Lots of them. So it would only logically follow that new, less traditional statistics have been invented to attempt to track less tangible, but meaningful attributes of a player’s performance. One such metric that has increased in popularity amongst baseball nerd circles is VORP, which is an acronym for Value Over Replacement Player. It is defined as the number of runs contributed beyond what a replacement-level player at the same position would contribute if given the same percentage of team plate appearances.

For example, if Jimmy Rollins, shortstop for the Philadelphia Phillies, were replaced by backup utility infielder Eric Bruntlett, what would the drop-off in statistical offensive production look like? Essentially, whatever this figure, would be factored towards creating Jimmy Rollins’ VORP.

Soon after VORP was created, people started to think about less productive players. Could there be such a thing as negative VORP, whereby a player’s performance is worse than a replacement player, and thus is actually detrimental to the team?

The answer, of course, was yes. For example, Andruw Jones, the five time All-Star and ten time Gold Glove Award Winner, had a VORP of -17.3 last year, as he could barely hit a baseball.

What does this have to do with real estate and finance, you ask? Absolutely nothing. But, it did get us thinking about the fun, somewhat practical nature of applying negative VORP to the world outside baseball.

What people outside baseball that have in some way affected the commercial real estate and finance community might have negative VORP?

Let’s take a look at various peoples’ VORP’s to find out.

George Bush (-21) - VORP: Value Over Replacement President

Tim Geithner (+1) - VORP: Value Over Replacing Paulson

Donald Trump (-7) VORP: Value Over RealityTV Personality

Harry Macklowe (-12) VORP: Value Over Realty Partner

Sam Zell (+34) VORP: Value Over REIT Profits

Bernie Madoff (-64 B) VORP: Value Over Real Ponzi

Please submit your own Negative VORP candidates by leaving a comment on this post….

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