Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Here Come The Sharks
The money guys are circling Peter Cooper and Stuyvesant Town.  Here is a Bloomberg article and a Wall Street Journal article on the players involved.  The special servicer is CW Capital.  I found this gem buried in the Bloomberg article:
Tishman Speyer and BlackRock each invested $112.5 million out of total equity financing of $1.9 billion. They took out a $3 billion mortgage from Wachovia Bank and $1.4 billion of mezzanine debt. The mortgage was packaged with other commercial- property loans and sold as securities. The biggest holders are Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the U.S. government-owned home-loan finance companies.
So Tishman Spyer and BlackRock each only put up about 2% of the entire purchase in equity.  This does not surprise me.  So why didn't this deal implode sooner?  Here is an outtake from the WSJ article showing a glimpse of the complexity facing the debt holders.

The leading contender to get initial control is CW Capital, a servicer that represents the investors who hold the $3 billion first mortgage on the property. That mortgage was packaged into commercial mortgage-backed securities known as CMBS. But the property's debt structure is complicated and others are likely to push for control, including possibly the thousands of residents of the more than 50-year-old complex.  When complex deals like the one for Stuyvesant Town fall apart, who is in control? The News Hub panel discusses what they call "the $4 billion question."

In addition to the first mortgage, there is $1.4 billion of junior, or "mezzanine," debt on the property and some holders of that debt have also been maneuvering for control in recent weeks. Some junior creditors may try to replace the Tishman venture as owners by agreeing to pay the debt service on the first mortgage. If CW Capital takes over, the mezzanine investors likely will suffer a big loss.
CW Capital is involved because most, if not all, of the debt is in CMBS.  CW Capital's job is got get as much money as possible for CMBS owners.  Freddie Mac and Fannie May own about $1.5 billion of the $3 billion of CMBS.  This story is going to evolve over a long, extended period. 

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