Mort Zuckerman

The GM Building, the tower that Mort Zuckerman's Boston Properties this week closed on for a record-breaking $2.8 billion, may no longer be known as the GM Building.

Just minutes ago, in a Boston Properties investors conference call to discuss the acquisition, president Douglas Linde said the GM Building's name may officially change, since General Motors -- which moved its headquarters there 40 years ago --is moving its remaining three floors, more than 100,000 square feet, from the marble tower to the Citigroup Center, another Boston Properties tower, also in Midtown.  read more »

Boston Properties chairman Mort Zuckerman appeared on Fox Business Channel on Wednesday. He talked about his record buy of the GM Building, the development at the World Trade Center site, and the foreign investment in city real estate. He also, apropos of nothing (as far as we can tell), took himself out of the 2009 mayoral campaign:

“If you ever hear anybody or me talking about that, you have the right to send me to a serious shrink.”

 read more »

My colleague Dana Rubinstein has inside details about the record GM Building deal in today's Observer.

The Wall Street Journal asks the burning question: Why did Mort Zuckerman and partners pay so much for a tower where most of the leases are locked in for several more years?  read more »

“I got great sleep last night,” Mort Zuckerman said on Tuesday afternoon, the day after he and his partners closed on the most expensive single-building purchase ever. Nine hours of sleep, no less.

As chairman of Boston Properties, Mr.  read more »

Early on Tuesday afternoon, Mort Zuckerman told a REBNY luncheon that he and his partners were closing on the approximately $2.8 billion purchase of the GM Building "as we speak."

At 4:38 p.m., a deed hit city records marking a $690 million transaction between Mr. Zuckerman's group and Macklowe Properties, the former owner of the GM Building, for the office tower at 761 Fifth Avenue (an address for the GM Building).  read more »

Mort Zuckerman, the jack of New York trades who, as chairman of Boston Properties, is today closing on the purchase of the GM Building, gave yet another rendition of his gloomy-as-hell take on the U.S. economy to a crowd of brokers at a Real Estate Board of New York luncheon at the Sheraton on Seventh Avenue.

But it wasn't without a sizeable dose of humor, and not without touching on subjects as varied as President Bush’s fiscal policy, the brilliance of TV gab pioneer John McLaughlin, and how practicing law is like lousy sex.

First, the medicinal:  read more »

The GM Building sale is "closing as we speak." That's according to Mort Zuckerman, who is addressing a Real Estate Board of New York luncheon this afternoon.

Mr. Zuckerman's Boston Properties, along with partners including Goldman Sachs, negotiated the purchase of the Macklowe Properties building late last month in a deal that valued it at around $2.8 billion. It's the most expensive building sale ever.

Mort Zuckerman doesn't screw around.

His Boston Properties could close as early as next week on its $2.8 billion purchase of the GM Building, according to Reuters.

Just as intriguing, Reuters is reporting that Boston Properties is considering buying out the remainder of FAO Schwarz's lease on the ground floor, and the leases of other below-market tenants:  read more »

The first few days after the biggest U.S. building sale ever was inked, things at the GM Building were “pretty much routine” in the words of one doorman, save for the presence of a few unofficial, four-legged tenants seen scampering among the stuffed animals at FAO Schwartz.

Not many people who work at the GM Building appeared to notice that Harry Macklowe had hammered out a deal with Mort Zuckerman and partners on Saturday to sell the jewel in his real estate crown for about $2.8 billion. By now, longtime GM tenants have surely grown accustomed to a changing of the guard every so often. Manhattan's most expensive office tower has had four different owners since 1991—five if you count Sheldon Solow—some of whom have shaken things up, and others less so.  read more »

Here's a clip from January of Mort Zuckerman, a regular on The McGlaughlin Group (we're surprised, too).

Mr. Zuckerman's comments on the credit crisis and how that helped tank the economy seems today especially relevant and perhaps a bit ironic, given how all that played into his acquisition over the weekend of Harry Macklowe's GM Building and three other Midtown towers.  read more »

GM Building buyer Mort Zuckerman sat down last October with The Observer's John Koblin to talk shop, particularly real estate (and some media--the Daily News publisher doesn't care much for the American press).

Here's what Mr. Zuckerman had to say about why he does what he does as chairman of Boston Properties:

So you’re saying you’re happy?  read more »

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A group led by Boston Properties chairman and Daily News publisher Mort Zuckerman is set to buy the GM Building from the embattled Harry Macklowe for about $2.9 billion, according to a Saturday morning announcement from Mr. Zuckerman's firm. (The announcement can be read here.) It is the biggest building sale in U.S. history, trumping the $1.8 billion deal for 666 Fifth Avenue, which closed in early 2007.

Mr. Zuckerman's group, which includes Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley as investors and advisers, also is set to buy three other midtown towers belonging to Mr. Macklowe: 540 Madison Avenue, a 39-story building at 55th Street; 125 West 55th Street, a 23-story building between Sixth and Seventh avenues; and the 44-story Two Grand Central Tower between Lexington and Third avenues.

The four-tower deal, according to Boston Properties, totals approximately $3.949 billion, including $1.4655 billion in cash and the assumption of $2.4735 billion in fixed-rate debt. The sale of the GM Building is expected to close in June and the others shortly after.  read more »

Mort Zuckerman, owner of The Daily News and aspiring owner of the GM Building, offered one depressing prediction after another about the U.S. economy during his keynote address at the New York Chapter of the Public Relations Society of America's 21st annual Big Apple Awards on Thursday night at the Rainbow Room.

According to a wry (and rather brilliantly written) press release, available here, Mr. Zuckerman was a bit of a downer:  read more »

Still waiting...

Two days after the New York Post declared an announcement was imminent about Mort Zuckerman's effort to buy Harry Macklowe's GM Building (and assorted other towers), we're still waiting.

"[W]e should learn all of the details today, when the pact is due to be announced," the Post reported on Wednesday.

Sorry to sound so impatient, but what a tease!

We'll touch base later.

"[W]e should learn all of the details today, when the pact is due to be announced," the New York Post declared on Wednesday, referring to the ongoing negotiations between Mort Zuckerman's Boston Properties and Harry Macklowe over the fate of his beloved GM Building and four other Manhattan towers.

But, like with much of the Macklowe saga, now in its fourth month, fresh news remained scarce. Yesterday passed with nary a peep from Mr. Macklowe or Mr. Zuckerman.  read more »

Harry Macklowe, the troubled real estate mogul desperately trying to extricate himself from a morass of debt obligations by selling off stakes in his GM Building, the Equity Office portfolio he bought from Blackstone last year, and other Manhattan properties, is back in the news.

The New York Post ran big today with the headline, “Macklowe finds a way out,” with the Wall Street Journal running a very similar story, “Goldman, Boston Properties, Others in Talks to Buy Macklowe’s GM Building.”

It was the first spot of new news on Macklowe in months, or so it seemed. But how has it changed what we know, and what we don’t know, about the elusive Mr. Macklowe?

Here’s a breakdown of what we've known for a while. After that, we give you a run-down of the "news" in the Post and Wall Street Journal's coverage.  read more »

Arianna Huffington made The New York Times on Friday morning for a blog post she wrote on her Web site about John McCain. In that post Ms. Huffington wrote that a few years back McCain told her at a dinner party that he did not vote for George W. Bush in 2000. This made McCain look like a hypocrite, and his campaign responded by calling Ms. Huffington “a flake and a poser and an attention-seeking diva.”  read more »

Rupert Murdoch was standing in a deep corner of the Rose Hall at about 7:30 p.m. last night to toast his fellow influencers: It was the Time 100 celebration, an event that drums up publicity for the magazine's decreasingly influential list of the 100 most influential people in the world.

The day before, Mr. Murdoch had promised investors and reporters listening in on a News Corp. investors' call that he'd prevail in his purchase of Newsday over rival bidders Mort Zuckerman and the Dolans.  read more »

It's officially a horse-race for the tabloid in a tutu.  read more »

Word was spreading last week that Sam Zell was in deep danger of credit default, but there might be an out (in fact, it's an out that Mr. Zell seems to already have begun working on). Reuters is reporting:  read more »

The Slatin Report has the first piece of fresh news in a long while about the possible sale of Harry Macklowe's GM Building. You'll remember it went on the market in January; and then two quick rounds of bids were done by early March. And then... well, not much beyond speculation.

Which brings us to today's news: Daily News publisher and Boston Properties chairman Mort Zuckerman is "the last man standing" in the fight to get the GM Building. And he may have to pay as much as $2.9 billion for it, which would make it the biggest single-building sale ever (that much we expected).

What's unexpected is Mr. Zuckerman himself. The Observer reported in early February that he was considering a bid for the building. "It's a terrific building without question," Mr. Zuckerman told our Eliot Brown then. Later, however, The New York Sun reported that Mr. Zuckerman was, in fact, not involved in the first round of bids.  read more »

The ever-reliable Peter Slatin is reporting today that Mort Zuckerman is the "last man standing" in the push to buy the G.M. Building on Fifth Avenue. The potential sale price? $2.9 billion.  read more »

Despite a rumor floating around Newsday headquarters on Friday that Rupert Murdoch had purchased the paper, Mort Zuckerman is still in the running.

Newsday reported on Saturday that Mr. Zuckerman is "aggressively pursuing" the paper and quotes an unnamed former executive at the paper who said he's been looking at it for a long time.

The Daily News announced this afternoon that its entire newspaper is going to be in color. You'll have to wait until the end of 2009 for this to happen, but when it does, it will be the "first major market daily newspaper in the U.S." that will be fully in color, touts the press release (which sadly is only in black and white). The News purchased new press equipment ("a multimillion investment") that will allow any image of any size to go in color, and they'll do just that starting next year.  read more »

Talks continue between Harry Macklowe and his creditors over the $7 billion in debt he owes connected to his purchase of seven Manhattan buildings last February. Otherwise, no new news to report this morning.

But my colleague, Eliot Brown, has a story in today's Observer about Mort Zuckerman's coy interest in Mr. Macklowe's GM Building, which he put on the market in January as a possible way to pay off some of the debt.

Is Mort Zuckerman planning a bid for Harry Macklowe’s General Motors Building at 767 Fifth Avenue?  read more »

Roger Stone doesn’t think much of the suggestion (based on my reading of a Weekly Standard story) that he had any role in drumming up a controversy over the fact that Eliot Spitzer’s father and MTA nominee Dale Hemmerdinger were members of the racially un-diverse Harmonie Club. Hemmerdinger's membership became a contentious political issue after an angry letter from Democratic Assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries.

Stone emails:

Azi
Just for the record, I never spoke to Hakim Jeffries, never spoke to his people and never asked anyone to speak to him. In fact, until I read the story I never heard of him.

He also said, “I admire what Jeffries did.”

In another email, Stone wrote:  read more »

The law firm Gibson Dunn is in the final stage of wrapping up a 200,000-square-foot lease for the tower floors of a planned Eighth Avenue skyscraper, a source said.  read more »

Spotted at 1 p.m. at the Grill Room in the Four Seasons today: Bill Rudin, Mort Zuckerman and Christine Quinn, all at separate tables.

Ms. Quinn, the City Council Speaker, stopped by Mr. Rudin’s table at the beginning of lunch; Mr. Rudin, scion of one of the city's oldest real estate families, stopped by Ms. Quinn’s table at the end. Mr. Zuckerman, the chairman of Boston Properties, stayed put as far as we could tell.

Mr. Zuckerman: Sit down, I’m reading about one of my favorite topics: the Middle East. I get all the articles—all the major political articles from all the Israeli newspapers. I’ve been reading it for 30 years; it’s really fantastic.  read more »