Is real estate mogul Kent Swig headed down the same path as Hassan Nemazee, the banker who stands accused of providing banks with false information to obtain nearly $300 million in loans? The Real Deal reported on Monday that Swig, who is facing a series of lawsuits over several real estate deals that have gone bust, may be forced to file for personal bankruptcy if a $28 million judgment against him is enforced.
Fashion survivor Betsey Johnson turns 67 today. Real estate developer Harry Macklowe is turning 72. Actress Angie Harmon is 37. Author, political commentator and blogger Andrew Sullivan is turning 46. Model/actress Devon Aoki is turning 27. Rosanna Arquette is 50. Times art critic Roberta Smith is turning 62. Legendary federal judge Jack Weinstein is 88. Harriet Miers, who served as White House counsel under George W. Bush, is 64. Actor Justin Theroux turns 38. And Antonio Banderas celebrates his 49th birthday today.
Who's had a crappier year: fallen real estate mogul Harry Macklowe or his son-in-law, developer Kent Swig? It's looking more and more like a toss up. Not only is Swig's condo project at 25 Broad Street blowing up, and his hotel venture at 45 Broad Street now in foreclosure, but Sheffield57—the drama-plagued apartment building Swig purchased with two partners in 2005 for $418 million—was sold off at auction today. The price? $20 million. [Crain's]
There's more bad news for real estate developer Kent Swig—and it has nothing to do the incident last fall when a former business partner clobbered him with an ice bucket, or the fact that his mentor and father-in-law is Harry Macklowe, possibly the unluckiest real estate mogul in town. The Real Deal reports that Citibank has filed a lawsuit against Swig for failing to repay a $5 million personal loan. [The Real Deal]
Real estate mogul Harry Macklowe made the worst business decision of his life in 2007 when he agreed to spend $7.25 billion to acquire a collection of office buildings in Midtown controlled by Steve Schwarzman's Blackstone Group. (Blackstone had acquired the buildings in 2006 as part of its buyout of Sam Zell's Equity Office Properties.) It's been a long, hard road for Macklowe since then. Creditors have since reclaimed 11 of the properties that Macklowe's real estate firm once controlled, including the iconic GM Building and, as of last week, Worldwide Plaza. The Observer surveys the carnage today, if you're interested in reading about Macklowe's misery in more detail. The good news, if there is any, is that Macklowe hasn't had to sit at his desk and watch his empire unravel over the past few months. He handed over control of the firm to son Billy Macklowe last year, so Billy's been the one with that super-fun job. [NYO]
Harry Macklowe's crumbling real estate empire is getting even smaller. The ex-billionaire purchased the Financial Times building at 1330 Avenue of the Americas in 2006 for $498 million. He's since failed to keep up with his mortgage payments, though, and now it's gone into foreclosure. Unfortunately for Harry and son Billy Macklowe, it's a process they're intimately familiar with: It's the eighth office building in town to slip from their fingers. [Reuters]
The Post has spotted a new real estate trend: apparently quite a few people have paid more than $45 million for apartments and townhouses recently. This "new stratosphere" includes Harry Macklowe ($60mm), J. Christopher Flowers ($53mm), Phil Falcone ($49mm), Dan Loeb ($45.8mm), Jon Tisch ($48mm) and Len Blavatnik, who paid $50 million to acquire a 15,000-square-foot townhouse from "Seagram's president Edgar Bronfman Jr." Bronfman hasn't served as the president of Seagram for about a decade now. But let this slip-up serve as a lesson to us all! If you take over your father's immensely valuable liquor empire and then sell off the pieces to fund your misguided investments in the music and film industries—and lose billions of your family's money in the process—you may be forced to downsize.
Celebrating birthdays today: Real estate broker Deborah Grubman—who also happens to be the wife of Allen and stepmom of Lizzie—turns 56. Party planner extraordinaire David Monn is 45. Designer John Varvatos turns 54. Dustin Hoffman is 71. Two former boy band-ers, Drew Lachey and JC Chasez, both turn 32 today. Tennis star Roger Federer is 27. And Robin Quivers is 56. Saturday is the big day for Chris Cuomo (left) who will be celebrating his 37th. Michael Kors will be turning 49. Allure's Linda Wells will be 50. And real estate broker Larry Kaiser and designer Peter Marino will be a year older on Saturday, too. On Sunday: Fashion icon Betsey Johnson will be 66, actress Angie Harmon will be 36, and real estate developer Harry Macklowe will turn 71.
The Observer sits down with attorney Jonathan Mechanic, widely considered to be one of the city's best-connected real estate attorneys. His clients? How about Jerry Speyer, Steve Roth, Stephen Green, Mike Bloomberg, Bruce Ratner, Doug Durst, Mort Zuckerman, Harry Macklowe, Miki Naftali, William Zeckendorf, Gary Barnett, Bill Rudin, Donald Trump, Kent Swig, Joe Moinian, and Larry Silverstein. We're exhausted just reading that list. [NYO]
Commercial real-estate history was made this weekend when the debt-inundated Macklowe family saved their rear end by selling the GM Building to Mort Zuckerman's Boston Properties for $2.9 billion, but the juiciest part of the story was the behind-the-scenes battle between Harry and Billy Macklowe. The Wall Street Journal is out with a story this morning about the intrafamilial friction, which basically portrays Macklowe the elder as a past-his-prime loose cannon who irresponsibly bet everything on a $7 billion folly, and Billy as a young genius who heroically saved the family fortune from his father's incompetence.
The founder and chairman emeritus of Macklowe Properties, Harry Macklowe has witnessed his fortunes rise and fall with the swinging pendulum of the real estate market over the past two decades. Now in the twilight of his career, he officially handed over control of the company to his son, Billy Macklowe, in June 2008.
