Equity Office Properties Trust

[CrackSmokeRepublican]

How much do you want to bet these Idiot Zionist Jews of Equity Office Properties Trust are going to ask the Goyim to bailout their Scamming Asses as Corporate USA real estate craters further ?   -- The CSR  :x


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Equity Office Properties Trust, formed in 1976 by Samuel Zell [1] and headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, was the largest owner of office buildings in the United States until the Blackstone Group acquired them in February 2007 for $23 billion plus the assumption of $16 billion in debt. The acquisition was one of the largest leveraged buyouts.

Notable properties

    * Chase Tower (Indianapolis)
    * Chicago Civic Opera House
    * Columbia Center
    * Frost Bank Tower
    * One Worldwide Plaza
    * Wachovia Financial Center
    * Washington Mutual Tower
    * Ferry Building


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equity_Office
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The Blackstone Group, L.P. (NYSE: BX) is an alternative asset management and financial services company that specializes in private equity, real estate, and marketable alternative investment strategies, as well as mergers and acquisitions (M&A), restructuring, and fund-placement advisory services.[1]

Blackstone's private equity business has been one of the largest investors in leveraged buyout transactions over the last decade while its real estate business has been an active acquirer of commercial real estate. Since inception, Blackstone has completed investments in such notable companies as Hilton Worldwide, Equity Office Properties, Apria Healthcare, Republic Services, AlliedBarton, United Biscuits, Freescale Semiconductor and Travelport.[2]

The firm was founded in 1985 as a mergers and acquisitions boutique by Peter G. Peterson and Stephen A. Schwarzman, who had previously worked together at Lehman Brothers, Kuhn, Loeb Inc. Over the course of two decades, Blackstone has evolved into one of the largest private equity investment firms globally. In 2007, Blackstone completed a $4 billion initial public offering to become one of the first major private equity firms to list shares in its management company on a public exchange.[3][4] Blackstone is headquartered at 345 Park Avenue in New York City, with more than a dozen additional offices in the United States, Europe and Asia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstone_Group


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Blackstone Acquiring Trust in Richest Buyout


By ANDREW ROSS SORKIN and TERRY PRISTIN
Published: November 20, 2006

The Blackstone Group, a private investment firm, said yesterday that it had agreed to acquire Equity Office Properties Trust, the nation's largest office-building owner and manager, for about $36 billion.

The deal marks the largest leveraged buyout in history, eclipsing the $33 billion paid earlier this year for H.C.A., the hospital chain, and it illustrates how private equity firms continue to gobble up corporate America. Under the transaction, Equity Office will go from being a publicly held company to a private one. Blackstone will pay $20 billion and assume $16 billion in debt.

Equity Office, with some 590 buildings and over 105 million square feet of office space in major metropolitan markets, was created in 1976 by Sam Zell, a real estate tycoon who built the business through dozens of acquisitions that were worth, in aggregate, more than $17 billion. Last year, Equity Office acquired the Verizon Building on Sixth Avenue in Manhattan for $515 million.

Matthew L. Ostrower, an analyst at Morgan Stanley, called the proposed deal "a ground-breaking transaction for the real estate world in general and an earthquake for the REIT industry."

Mr. Ostrower said that if a company the size of Equity Office chose not to remain public, "now every public company out there is going to have to some degree examine their capitalization, whether being public makes sense."

The deal will make Blackstone, which was founded in 1985 by Peter G. Peterson and Stephen A. Schwarzman, one of the nation's largest owners of real estate.

"We believe that the skills and strengths of Equity Office will greatly enhance our existing office platform," Jonathan D. Gray, senior managing director of Blackstone, said in a statement.

For Mr. Zell, one of richest men in America and the owner of more real estate than Donald J. Trump, the sale is an opportunity to cash out of part of the empire he built while working from his office in the old Daily News Building in Chicago. But the sale by Mr. Zell, who made his first millions in the 1970's buying distressed real estate, may also signal that he believes the market may have peaked.

Just last month, Ross L. Smotrich, an analysts at Bear Stearns, wrote in a note to investors: "REIT's have outperformed the broader market in each of the past seven years, putting valuations at the high end of historical ranges."

But in an upbeat report issued last week, Green Street Advisors, a research company, said that office rents, which have increased 8 percent over the past year, are likely to continue to rise next year. REIT's usually own and operate income-producing real estate.

Private equity firms are vying to hold the crown of having led the biggest buyout in history, and, with this deal, Blackstone will be able to do so at least for now. Blackstone will move ahead of Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Company, which led the H.C.A. sale. Kohlberg Kravis also held the prior record with its 1989 takeover of RJR Nabisco, a deal that came to define an era when it was chronicled in the book "Barbarians at the Gate."

The transaction comes amid a private equity frenzy for the next big leveraged buyout. Last week, Clear Channel was acquired for about $26 billion by a team of private equity firms. Other deals, like the $22 billion purchase of the gas pipeline company Kinder Morgan or the sale of Freescale Semiconductor for $17.6 billion, have redefined the size and scope of leveraged buyouts. Harrah's, the big casino company, is currently in negotiations to be taken over by another group of private equity firms.

For many years, it was Equity Office that bought up other companies, but the company's performance in recent years has cast doubt on Mr. Zell's longtime credo that "bigger is better." In 2000, as the dot-com industry was about slide, Equity Office acquired a large portfolio of buildings in the Silicon Valley and was later forced to sell them at a loss.

In recent years, Equity Office has reduced its holdings in weaker markets like Dallas, Houston and New Orleans and has tried to establish a bigger presence in stronger markets like New York and Washington. In 2005, the company sold $2.7 billion in assets.

Blackstone, meanwhile, has been the biggest acquirer of large buildings over the last five years. It has bought interests in $32 billion worth of property, 50 percent more than next largest buyer, said Robert M. White Jr., president of Real Capital Analytics, a New York research company.

This year alone, Blackstone has bought $20 billion worth of real estate, or 7 percent of all acquisitions. It has been involved in more REIT buyouts and mergers than any other company.

Blackstone began buying office REIT's only this year, first by paying $5.6 billion for CarrAmerica Realty Corporation, which had interests in 285 buildings, mainly in California and Washington, D.C. In a deal that closed last month, Blackstone teamed with Brookfield Properties, a REIT, to buy Trizec Properties, the owner of 61 office buildings, including the W.R. Grace Building in Manhattan.

Under the latest deal, Blackstone would pay $48.50 a share for Equity Office, representing an 8.5 percent premium to its closing price on Friday of $44.72.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/20/busin ... ref=slogin