“How does Bill Ackman do it” is a question the investing community surely asks itself on a daily basis. Three words: Berkshire Mountains hideaway. Outsiders may figure in-depth research combined with skillful and ethical activism and a highly concentrated portfolio are the keys to Pershing Square’s success but, really, a 100-acre spread in upstate New York is the engine that drives this firm.
Specifically, the one found in Chatham, New York, that Ackman “scraped together the money” to buy in 2003, just months before his second act hedge fund launched, to arguably more success than its predecessor, Gotham Partners. Coincidence? Bill doesn’t think so. “This place has really good investing karma,” Ackman tells us. (Since buying the house, Pershing has had 21 percent compound returns. You do the math.) Is this information relevant in any way to your universe? If you’ve got $5 million to spare, a yen for sweeping views of the Berkshire mountains, and a desire to pump up lackluster returns it might be.
Despite spending many a happy (and profitable) weekend at the place over the last nine years, Ackman has with great reluctance and probably more than a few tears decided to put it on the market, having precious little time to make the (quick and painless!) trip up now that his three children have many an extracurricular commitment to tend to. According to Bill, he’s offering you “the deal of a lifetime” (and, in our professional opinions, we agree), when you consider 1) what he bought it for ($3.2 million, then put another $1.5 million in) and 2) what you’re getting. Things like: Continue reading »
JSC has reportedly put his Hoboken hideaway on the market, for reasons that are unclear at this time (and which we should not speculate over. Surely there are some who will be quick to suggest he’s downsizing and freeing up cash in case he needs money for legal fees but we have no idea, do we? Maybe the new venture became a success sooner than anyone thought, and he’s moving to a bigger place. Maybe he’s decided to live in France full-time). Some details, for those interested in a place with a story to tell: Continue reading »
In the market for a 6,744-square-foot penthouse with views of Central Park and the opportunity to run into Lloyd, Loeb or Sting in the elevator? Sandy Weill’s got something you might be interested in. It’s his 15CPW apartment and the Journal reports it could be yours for $88 million, merely double what Weill paid for it in 2007. What’s in it for you? In addition to a 2,077-square-foot terrace, 12 and a half foot high ceilings, plus the knowledge that Sandy “held parties for scores of guests in his 33-foot-wide living room, with the concert pianist Lang Lang performing,” you’d be making Sando, whose heart still hurts over everything that went down at Citi, look good. How so? Sandy and Joan, who’ve decided to kick it old school by downsizing to a smaller apartment in the same building (“He said he wanted it known that he was remaining true to his roots in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, and wasn’t abandoning New York City”), won’t be keeping the money.
Sanford I. Weill, the former chairman and chief executive of Citigroup Inc., has put one of the most celebrated postwar penthouses in Manhattan on the market for $88 million, saying that at a difficult period in the country’s history, it is “a pretty good time” for wealthy Americans “to be quiet.” He said he intends to donate to charity the proceeds from the sale.
And, if you happen to be one of the jerks who abandoned the guy in recent years, there’s a bonus component for laying down the cash- you get to live, having bought your way off Joan Weill’s To Kill list. Continue reading »
Real-estate developer Stephen Ross and his partners spent more than a year digging into U.S. banks, including more than 100 with loans to local bakeries, gas stations and amusement parks. They hoped to spend about $1.1 billion buying or investing in lenders. But the deeper they went, the worse things looked. As a result, Related Cos., the New York firm in which Mr. Ross is chief executive, gave back the money it raised from roughly 150 investors, including hedge-fund manager David Einhorn. The firm did find several investments it was interested in but was outbid. In a prospectus, SJB had told potential investors: “We believe the environment presents a significant opportunity for SJB to consummate an attractive acquisition of one or more institutions, whereas the current weakness in the banking sector and a potential long duration of any recovery create a favorable long-term environment to build a successful commercial bank.” Terms of the pool required SJB to invest the money within 18 months [but]…with the clock ticking on its 18-month deadline, Messrs. Ross, Blau and Beal sent a letter to investors Aug. 18 informing them that the fund would be liquidated. Investors received roughly 97 cents on the dollar after expenses. Mr. Blau, Related’s president, had led the effort to find potential investments for the fund [and] in many cases, didn’t liked what he saw, including loans that were secured by portable toilets and bowling balls. “It was a lot of work, and it was hard to make the numbers work,” he said. [WSJ]
New CIO Scott Bessent’s ability to turbo-charge returns could mean the difference between the boss being able to gift multiple ladies with apartments and being sued by on-again/off-again girlfriends he promised a dream house on East 85th. Continue reading »
Last month, the California housing market got a huge boost when the younger daughter of Formula 1 boss Bernie Ecclestone decided to buy Candy Spelling’s 57,000 square foot house. At the time we noted that despite what the haters had to say (that this was “a gift from daddy to his spoiled little girl”), Petra clearly purchased the spread not simply because it’d be a nice vacation house when she visits the states (her primary residence is a a six-story house in London’s Chelsea neighborhood purchased for £56 million) but as a shrewd business decision that would be a boon not only to California but her own portfolio. Over the weekend, Ecclestone confirmed just that, telling an interviewer “It was a great investment. It’s prime real estate and I got a really good deal.” Continue reading »
Time was, the Hamptons could count on Wall Street guys taking home enormous packages at year-end to buy up its inventory of multi-million dollar homes. They’d come to a mutual understanding, if you will. Not only would they lay out $45 million in cash for a 12-bedroom spread, but they’d be happy to pay the same for some 2-bedroom hole 2 miles from the beach because why not? Now, due to the bloody financial crisis, people are actually stopping, thinking, and in some disturbing cases, negotiating on the price. Continue reading »
In February 2010, RBS employee Jim Glover (AKA G-Love) was told that his services were no longer required by the firm, when it came to light he’d spent that last year or so instructing junior employees to submit wires that would normally go to a counterparty to pay for trades, and then approving them to, instead, go to his personal account. The Glove Love did so, it’s been suggested, because he wasn’t happy with what he believed to be an offensively paltry bonus that wasn’t sufficient enough to fund his dream: “to build beautiful luxury mountain homes in his favorite ski town, Windham, N.Y.” Now that Glover has pleaded guilty and faces a fine of up to $1.25 million (plus ten years in jail), his own dream house has been put on the block and it could conceivably be yours a ten-spot, as the auction requires no minimum bid. According to the listing: Continue reading »
Petra and dad
As I’m sure many of you know, after 90210 creator Aaron Spelling died, his wife Candy decided to downsize. She put her house on the market and moved into a $35 million 15,555 square foot condo, figuring it wouldn’t be too long before the place sold. Unfortunately, at the end of 2008, not too many people were looking for homes that had names (“The Manor”), 57,000 square feet, rooms solely devoted to gift-wrapping and asking prices of $150 million. Though she was probably advised to knock a few zeros off, Candy, the little known inspiration for Heather Locklear’s Melrose Place character, held her ground and refuse to budge on the price. Recently it started looking like the house that shows about teenagers getting high and humping built would never get sold, until a little lady named Petra Ecclestone swooped in and saved the day. Continue reading »
In 2008, Nedim Soylemez paid $3.1 million for an apartment in Tribeca. He didn’t move in until 16 months later, though, as the space needed a “stressful gut renovation” that “surpassed his $1 million budget” by an undisclosed amount in order to attain perfection. For Soylemez, perfection includes:
* Unnatural light (The windowless north wall features a video installation of Joshua Tree, Calif, which “creates the illusion of a window suffused with changing desert light.” “People will say, ‘Oh, what does that look out onto?’” Soylemez told the Journal. Nothing and that’s how he likes it. “If it’s going to be all light and all windows, it should be in the Hamptons, where I can take my shirt off and jump in the pool,” he said.)
* A bathroom where he can get away from it all (The trader likes spending time in his 150-square-foot master bathroom, where the concrete-and-marble shower has speakers and four showerheads, and the tub has a TV.)
* “Inconspicuous shower drains and air-conditioning vents”
* “Asymmetrical kitchen counters and multiangled walls”
* A guest room that will freak out particularly inebriated guests should the wake in the middle of the night (in windowless room used as a guest bedroom, a spectrum of colored lights (fluorescent tubes with different-colored gels) placed behind a floating wall suggest sunlight peeking through a crack.)
* Enough space for him not to feel like people are breathing down his neck or demanding his constant attention (Mr. Soylemez’s girlfriend, 29-year-old Rebecca Lee, said the apartment creates opportunities to slow down for Mr. Soylemez, who tends to wander away in midconversation or become distracted by his BlackBerry.) Continue reading »
Time was, you put a house on the market in Greenwich, Connecticut and you got your $35 million asking price in a matter of days- and it didn’t even have to come with 26-toilets, a property that would cause a serious bidding war. Greenwich could count on Wall Street to make it rain ka-ching! on people’s faces come bonus time and those people would in turn say sure, here’s $35 mill in cash, buy yourself something nice and all was right in the world. Now? With this bull shit about putting “greater emphasis on deferred compensation” and “incorporating risk management into performance measures”? It’s making would-be buyers think things through and not jump at relative bargains at $15.95 million. Continue reading »
