$350 million Greening of Chicago Sears Tower in Doubt

Well, it’s not actually the Sears Tower anymore—it’s called the Willis Tower. But the point is that the firm hired to find the public financing for the big green project was fired without a 30-day notice, so now there’s a law suite. This is what Crain’s Chicago has to say about it:

(Crain’s) — A co-owner of Willis Tower is rethinking a $350-million plan to make the 110-story skyscraper more eco-friendly, according to a lawsuit.

Pickering & Associates LLC, a public affairs firm hired to find public financing sources for the project, alleges that landlord American Landmark Properties Ltd. breached its contract with Pickering by trying to fire the firm Feb. 1, without a required 30-day notice.

The breach “occurred shortly after American Landmark informed Pickering that American Landmark was re-evaluating the viability of the (project) and the possibility of funding it through public sources,” says the complaint, filed in Cook County Circuit Court.

American Landmark unveiled the ambitious plan for the former Sears Tower in June 2009, calling it one of “the most significant sustainable modernization projects of an existing building ever taken.”

The so-called Greening Project would include replacing all 16,000 windows in the tower, 233 S. Wacker Drive, and adding grass and wind turbines to its roof. American Landmark at the same time also announced plans to build a luxury hotel next door to the skyscraper.

Climate Change Made Easy

When scientists become political–even with the best of intentions–the result is sloppy science. That appears to be the case with the ongoing saga of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which has been embroiled in controversy around email leaks. The group does not conduct its own research but filters the work of researchers around the world.

Now, according to the WSJ, the IPCC is working to heal the bruises on its tarnished image, to smooth over the negative effects of inside dialog such as this:

As climate change gained public attention in recent decades, some IPCC-affiliated scientists privately expressed concerns that conclusions were risked getting oversimplified. Keith Briffa, a climate scientist at East Anglia, expressed this worry in emails to colleagues in 1999, as work intensified on the IPCC’s third major report, published in 2001. Mr. Briffa’s particular concern: tree rings.

Scientists use tree rings and other proxies to assess temperatures thousands of years ago, before thermometers existed. Wider rings indicate greater growth, generally suggesting warmer temperatures, or higher precipitation, or both. Mr. Briffa pioneered the technique.

“I know there is pressure to present a nice tidy story as regards ‘apparent unprecedented warming in a thousand years or more,’ ” he wrote to other researchers in the email, among those hacked at East Anglia. “In reality the situation is not quite so simple,” Mr. Briffa wrote.

Simon Makes $10 Billion Bid for General Growth

Guest post from David Bodamer, editor-in-chief, Retail Traffic Magazine

Simon Property Group via a press release made public this morning that just more than a week ago it submitted a formal bid to acquire General Growth Properties for about $10 billion.

General Growth has not yet responded to the release. All indications are that General Growth would like to emerge from Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection as an independent entity. To date it has been extremely successful in restructuring its secured debt. It still, however, has about about $6 billion in unsecured debt that must be restructured. A big chunk of that is believed to be owned by Simon Property Group with Canadian REIT Brookfield Asset Management Inc. owning another big piece of that debt. As unsecured creditors, both firms have the a great deal of power over the fate of the bankrupt entity and can end up owning most of the company in the event of a debt-for-equity swap. In addition, holders of unsecured debt will get to vote when General Growth’s plan for exiting bankruptcy is presented to creditors. For its part, General Growth recently sought to extend the exclusivity period for the filing of its reorganization plan by six months, until the end of August, in part to deal with this debt.

Simon’s offer says that General Growth’s shareholders would get $9.00 per share in the deal. That’s actually lower than where General Growth’s stock is trading in the OTC markets. Indeed, with this announcement the stock will probably jump even higher. Pre-market activity has the stock at $10.60 and counting.

It appears Simon’s play here is to offer unsecured creditors 100 cents on the dollar for the debt they own rather than face any reduction in that amount that General Growth might seek as it continues with its restructuring.

The full text of Simon’s release is below: (more…)

MBA Sells Headquarters at a Huge Loss

The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) has suffered the consequences of an inflated mortgage and falling property values. Last week, CoStar Group bought the organization’s D.C. headquarters for $41.3 million, somewhat less than the $79 million the group reportedly paid in 2007.

According to the Wall Street Journal:

The price also is far below the $75 million financing that the MBA received from a group of banks led by PNC Financial Services Group Inc. to finance the purchase.

Aftershock: Tishman Abandons Stuyvesant to Creditors

It was one of the most major deals of all times and it was consummated at the height of the market in 2006 — the $5.4 billion acquisition of the sprawling Peter Cooper Village and Stuyvesant Town apartment complex in Manhattan. Now the deal is likely to go down in history as one of the largest defaults — $4.4 billion in debt.

Now investors and lenders are assessing the fallout. According to the New York Times:

Yet in walking away, the partners, Tishman Speyer Properties and BlackRock Realty, have left tenants in limbo and other investors with far bigger losses.

Many of the other companies, banks, countries and pension funds — including the government of Singapore, the Church of England, the Manhattan real estate concern SL Green, and Fortress Investment Groups — that invested billions of dollars in the 2006 deal stand to lose their entire stake.

And according to WSJ, the biggest question on the table is who takes control of the property:

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.

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.

Now the question is, “who will take the keys on behalf of which level of debt,” said Mark Edelstein, head of the real-estate group at law firm Morrison & Foerster LLP. According to a person familiar with the situation, the Tishman venture has reached out to CW Capital to start the property-transfer process.

Excel Trust Files $300 Million IPO to Buy Retail

Just right around when everyone was turning on their out-of-office messages for the holidays, Excel Trust made a securities filing for an IPO to sell up to $300 million in common shares. As a REIT, the company would acquire retail assets such as shopping centers, power centers and neighborhood shopping centers.

CDO Scandal: ‘Buying fire insurance on someone else’s house and committing arson’

Did the big investment banks package and sell shoddy real estate mortgage debt and then bet against it? Here are some excerpts from an NYT Christmas Eve story: “Banks Bundled Bad Debt, Bet Against It and Won”

While the investigations are in the early phases, authorities appear to be looking at whether securities laws or rules of fair dealing were violated by firms that created and sold these mortgage-linked debt instruments and then bet against the clients who purchased them, people briefed on the matter say.

One focus of the inquiry is whether the firms creating the securities purposely helped to select especially risky mortgage-linked assets that would be most likely to crater, setting their clients up to lose billions of dollars if the housing market imploded.

Some securities packaged by Goldman and Tricadia ended up being so vulnerable that they soured within months of being created.

“The simultaneous selling of securities to customers and shorting them because they believed they were going to default is the most cynical use of credit information that I have ever seen,” said Sylvain R. Raynes, an expert in structured finance at R & R Consulting in New York. “When you buy protection against an event that you have a hand in causing, you are buying fire insurance on someone else’s house and then committing arson.”

One-Stop Report Reiterates Business Case for Energy Retrofits

This newly released report “Energy efficiency and real estate: Opportunities for investment” from Ceres and Mercer is pretty good in that it combines case studies from REITs to institutional portfolios as well as surveys and data from sources such as RREEF, McKinsey and several universities. Ceres is a coalition of investors, environmental groups and other public interest organizations working with companies to address sustainability challenges such as global climate change. Mercer provides consulting, outsourcing and investment services.

Here are some excerpts:

-A 2009 Maastricht University study found rental premiums of 3.5 percent on US office properties, a six percent increase in occupancy for “ENERGY STAR” buildings and a 16-17 percent premium on sales prices per square foot.

–For instance, in 2008 financial services giant TIAA-CREF established a goal of reducing energy use in its real estate portfolio 10 percent by 2010, and the company is well on its way to meeting that goal. The effort is already yielding $4 million a year in reduced energy costs across the portfolio, and all new buildings TIAA-CREF develops will be LEED certified.

–The California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS), the world’s largest pension fund, is also on target to meet a 20 percent energy use reduction goal in its real estate by the end of this year, “As fiduciaries, focusing on energy efficiency in our real estate portfolios just makes sense,” said CalPERS CEO Anne Stausboll. “CalPERS invests in millions of square feet of real estate,” said Stausboll, “so cutting back on energy use and lowering operating costs can only boost the value of the properties in our portfolio, while also contributing to climate change mitigation.”

No talk of religion, politics, money OR carbon cuts

After developing nations walked out of the Copenhagen Climate Talks yesterday amid disagreements over which countries pollute and which countries should pay to cover the impacts of climate change (the developed nations), a new draft of a U.N.-sponsored international climate change agreement is circulating today. Most notably, it takes both questions off the table–long-term emission reduction goals and long-term cleanup financing.

According to Bloomberg:

With China and India seeking at least $200 billion a year for developing states, envoys at the climate talks in Copenhagen bargained over several options for funding starting after 2012. No amounts were pledged, according to a draft accord today. The talks among 193 nations end Dec. 18, and poorer countries say they’ll reject an accord that offers no money.

“This is eyewash — it’s a paper tiger,” Quamrul Chowdhury, a Bangladeshi envoy who coordinates the group of Least Developed Countries on finance issues, said in an interview. “There is nothing in terms of long-term finance.”

Carbon Dioxide Declared Danger to Public Health

At the global climate summit in Copenhagen today, the Obama Administration declared carbon dioxide a threat to public health, leaving the door is open for the EPA to regulate emissions from vehicles, factories and power plants.

American business groups, including U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers and the Edison Electric Institute oppose the declaration, saying it will place undue costs on an already struggling economy.

Despite such dire predictions, there is some good news today on the carbon capture front. It comes from the National Coal Council, a federal advisory committee to the U.S. Secretary of Energy. Today the NCC presented the U.S. Department of Energy with recommendations for broad deployment of carbon dioxide capture and storage technologies to achieve an 80% reduction in carbon dioxide emissions by 2050 with sustained economic and employment growth.

The study found that extensive deployment of coal-based generation with carbon dioxide capture and storage over the next 40 years would increase U.S. GDP by $2.7 trillion, create 28 million job-years over four decades from new construction, and support 800,000 permanent jobs related to operation and maintenance of these facilities. The analysis also found that related enhanced oil recovery projects utilizing the captured CO2 could help extract more than 2 million barrels per day of domestic oil.

“The technologies to deploy coal-based power generation with carbon capture and storage are available now, subject to establishment of the proper financial, regulatory and liability framework,” said NCC Study Chair Fred Palmer, senior vice president of government relations at Peabody Energy.

Meanwhile, back in Copenhagen, talks of carbon trading are heating up. According to MarketWatch:

The value of the global carbon trading market could rise from roughly $118 billion in 2008 to nearly $2 trillion by 2020, although it currently remains frozen in the headlights pending safe passage of U.S. emissions trading legislation.

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