Monday, March 17, 2008

Bear Stearns Actually Was Given Away

From Choire Sicha:

All these stories about the purchase price of Bear Stearns—it's being bought, supposedly, for $2 a share, for a total cost of $270 million—are wrong in a fundamental way, I think. JPMorgan Chase also gets the building with the company, because Bear Stearns owns it, as was noted in the conference call tonight. That building, 383 Madison—47 floors, built by SOM—is said by the Federal Reserve (as part of their bailout) to be worth $1.2 billion. (And it's gotta be worth more. The MetLife building sold for $1.72 billion in 2005; 666 Fifth Avenue was bought (for better or for worse!) at the end of 2006 for $1.8 billion.) So actually JPMorgan Chase just got paid well over a billion dollars to take on a company. I'm obviously no expert but like couldn't the jokesters at Bear Stearns refinance the building for some cash or something? That's ridiculous. Update: I think that people aren't covering it because no one can figure out the relationship between Bear and its building, including the tricky use of a "synthetic lease.">>>MORE

HT: DealBreaker