President Bush has pledged $4b of your taxes to Chrysler. Ultimately, the money will be under the control of the ailing American automaker’s owners, Cerberus Financial. Despite the enormous call on the public purse to fund a company whose prospects are dimmer than a 70’s porno theater, the secretive private equity group that pulls ChryCo’s strings has not opened the company’s books to full public scrutiny. Fortunately, we have a little something called the free press (and I don’t mean you Freep) ready to poke its nose into the dealings of the company about to poke its nose into the federal trough. The Wall Street Journal [sub] reports that “Public documents filed in Oakland County, Mich. show a Cerberus subsidiary called Auburn Hills Owner, LLC, bought the 458-acre complex on Aug. 3, 2007, for $325 million. That same day, Cerberus completed the deal to take over 80.1% of Chrysler from Daimler.” While the Journal seems obsessed with the fact that ChryCo employees didn’t know that Chrysler proper doesn’t own the Auburn Hills campus, the accounting behind the transaction is more interesting…
“While trying to sell Chrysler, Daimler put a higher value on the property. The sales binder that Daimler showed to potential buyers of Chrysler said the headquarters had a book value of $800 million and that Daimler had received an offer of $1.2 billion for the complex in August 2006, according to people who have seen the two-inch thick prospectus.
“The city of Auburn Hills assessed the property’s value at just over $460 million last year, down from a peak of approximately $620 million in 2005… On the day the acquisition of Chrysler closed, Cerberus secured a loan of $225 million against the headquarters building from Citigroup Global Markets Realty Corp., public documents show.
“A person familiar with the matter said Cerberus used that money to pay part of the $325 million it owned [sic] Daimler for the building.”
The bottom line: Cerberus owns the property and Chrysler pays rent to cover the nut. What’s the nut? What’s the rent? Unknown. As “investors” in Chrysler, taxpayers should demand to know every detail of their business. What other skeletons lurk in Cerberus’ closet?
[thanks to tced2 for the link]
We(taxpayers)’ve been screwed, blued and tattooed.
It was a sad day in the history of this coutry when President Bush decided to give our taxes away just like that.
It was a sad day in the history of this country when Cheney Bush became President.
No different that how they split the retailer Mervyn’s into an operating company in liquadation and property holding company that is in good shape.
The important thing to realize here is that this is a very tangible asset. If Chrysler disappears completely this complex will still be there. This is an enormous complex – when it was being built (1990’s) it was the largest construction project in North America.
I can’t criticize Chrysler for building it because their previous corporate facilities (including R&D and engineering) were very old and spread out. This complex was one of the fruits of the new Chrysler at the end of the Iacocca reign. Chrysler was doing pretty well in those days.
Another part of this story was that Bob Lutz was really running Chrysler at that time (as president of Chrysler I believe). I know that a lot of readers of this blog don’t like Bob Lutz but he was running a pretty successful company at the time. then Bob Eaton appeared on the scene…and then Daimler..and then you know the rest of the story.,
“The richest one percent of this country owns half our country’s wealth, five trillion dollars [outdated 1980s figures, the top one percent now have much more than half the country’s wealth].
One third of that comes from hard work, two thirds comes from inheritance, interest on interest accumulating to widows and idiot sons and what I do, stock and real estate speculation.
It’s bullshit. You got ninety percent of the American public out there with little or no net worth. I create nothing. I own. We make the rules, pal. The news, war, peace, famine, upheaval, the price per paper clip. We pick that rabbit out of the hat while everybody sits out there wondering how the hell we did it.
Now you’re not naive enough to think we’re living in a democracy, are you buddy? It’s the free market.”
Man, my dad spent 20 years at Highland Park HQ and another 17 at Auburn Hills. I have some nightmare stories about the shit that went on at Oakland Avenue. People getting robbed and cars getting stolen. One or two employees were murdered…one on the Davison service drive after work.
Originally, Townsend wanted to move the HQ to Troy off of 75….near White Chapel Cemetary. they had the land purchased and everything. Nothing came of that even after ramps were built from 75. I think Yamasaki was going to have the commission. That would have been sweet.
Just some info….back to the thread….
It was a sad day in the history of this coutry when President Bush decided to give our taxes away just like that.
That day happened a long time ago when Bush decided to pour our tax money into the Iraqi desert for no reason whatsoever. The trillions that cost us makes the auto bailout irrelevant. We might as well bellyache about being hit by a rain drop while treading water in a pool.
@ Qwerty :
Ok this is gonna get me in trouble but the Iraq war will have a return on investment. Unless someone squanders what we’ve gained, we stand to have a strong influence over an oil rich nation smack dab in the middle of the middle east. When the next oil price spike happens and Iran gets all uppity, we’ll have the upper hand. Iran knows it and Russia knows it. Conquering Iraq was in our long term interest.
Throwing trillions at the banks and GM and Chrysler on the other hand was pure foolishness.
Standard Cerberus bleeding of a company. Look at how they manhandled Mervyn’s, kept the real estate and sent the rest of the operation into bankruptcy.
These guys have no moral standard beyond getting as much for themselves as fast as possible.
Buyout funds follow The Platinum Rule: Screw the other guy before he gets the chance to screw you. ™
I recently spoke with a Chrysler insider who talked about how bad it’s been since Cerebrus purchased them. He stated that Cerebrus is doing the same thing they did to Mervyns. They sold the property that Mervyns owned to a company that is a subsidiary of Cerebrus, then jacked up the rents forcing them out of business. The same will happen to Chrysler and our tax money will never be repaid.
Transfering public funds to private interests used to be called theft in office, violation of the public trust, graft, corruption. Now it is done blatantly and we eat it. It is done for jobs. It is done for children. It is done- time after time, year after year, ‘to prevent the financial system collapsing.’
Their reasons and excuses are increasingly trite and ridiculous. I’m sure they are the most amazed people on the planet that they are actually getting away with it.
I can almost bet (you can almost actually see this writing on this wall) that Cerberus used the Daimler estimate of property value at the time ($ 800M) to establish an excessively high rent multiple, and this is how they “legally” suck the money out for a rapid repayment of the cash down part of buying Chrysler.
Unfortunately there is no return for the war in Iraq. I agree with you, it was probably an oil grab. However, the decision to withdraw was made in 2006, with the overall withdrawal plan devised by Henry Kissinger. Counter-insurgency, no withdrawal until after the 08 elections, then a slow withdrawal, pretty much a replay of Kissingers advice to Nixon in Vietnam. The Bush administration agreed last summer to Iraqi demands for total US withdrawal in the new status of forces agreement.
Now, realize Venezuela has 6 times the oil reserves of Saudi Arabia. Much of it is not counted by OPEC, because it is heavy oil which costs more to extract, and to refine, but Venezuela does have the oil to power the entire world for another 200 years. Brazil made a major offshore oil discovery, eventually they may have more oil than Venezuela.
Ok, I think one of the first things is we look at who Cerberus really is.
For one, ex Republican vice president Dan Quayle is Chairman of an international division of Cerberus………..
Good ole boy network……..
…just msc info … a lot of dealers operate in a similar fashion … they set up one company to own their building/property and another to own the dealership franchise itself.
There’s nothing wrong with the idea of splitting out the real estate from the main company. The rent payments are an expense that reduce the tax liability, and it reduces Chrysler to what it should be, which is a car company, not a real estate operator.
But the government should have made free rent during the bailout period as a condition for the bailout cash. If Cerberus is really in it for the long haul, that shouldn’t be too much to ask. I guess that we forgot to ask.
Qwerty and Matt51, you’re letting your obsession with Iraq stain your perspective on other matters. Iraq, for all its troubles, is no longer a threat to global stability and now is the best-functioning republic in the Arab world. That is an achievement of great value to everyone except our enemies. Iraq’s challenge now, as Benjamin Franklin observed of the very young United States, is “to keep it.”
Cerberus’s Mervyn’s experience is rightly cited, but they are by far not the only corporate-rider cum hedge fund behaving as a locust does.
Consider the firm TeDrive. Spun-out of Ford into Visteon Germany. Sold by Visteon to Special Situation Partners II and Advised by Orlando Capital Management.
TeDrive filed bankruptcy a couple of weeks ago, even though it is still providing Ford of Europe with the majority of its hydraulic steering gears and FWD half-shafts (and other items.)
One of the interesting items that bubbled to the surface here, is how SSP/Orlando, transferred TeDrive’s real-estate and Intellectual Property assets out of TeDrive into Orlando, and forced TeDrive to lease back the plants and pay license fees on the IP (at millions of Euros per year). Additionally, it was reported that TeDrive transferred 3 million Euros in capital to the Brazilian affiliate (which was not part of the bankruptcy filing).
These financial shell games destroy the manufacturing fibre of the first world, while enriching the guys sitting atop firms like Cerberus and SSP/Orlando.
And finally, having knuckleheads like Quayle as a vice-Chairman of Cerberus International, running around speaking of Chrysler and saying asinine things like “we are a opportunity (opportunitistic?) investor”, shows the real stripes of the company, and how they leverage the old boy’s network…
And finally, having knuckleheads like Quayle as a vice-Chairman of Cerberus International, running around speaking of Chrysler and saying asinine things like “we are a opportunity (opportunitistic?) investor”, shows the real stripes of the company
I’m not fond of either Cerberus or Dan Quayle, but I seriously doubt that figureheads such as Quayle make substantive decisions or do real work for the company.
These boards often include former politicians on the payroll so that the company’s phone calls to government officials get returned. Some of them add celebrities to their boards for the visibility, and because having a famous athlete or rock star on board could land some meetings and positive PR.
If Cerberus is nasty and evil (and it is), it’s probably because of cutthroats such as Steve Feinberg who run the show, not because of half-wits such as Dan Quayle who are along for the ride.
The trillions that cost us makes the auto bailout irrelevant.
So far the Iraq war has cost about $700 billion. That’s about $1.3 trillion shy of “trillions”
Bush
Cheney
Quayle
Detroit
yada
yada
yada
blah
blah
blah
Four legs good, two legs bad.
It would be nice to see some original thought instead of talking points and cant. I realize that self-reflection and a fearless examination of one’s own premises can result in cognitive dissonance, but that’s how people learn and grow.
The hardest thing for some people to say is “I was wrong”. I’m sure that Pres. Bush and V.P. Cheney are more capable of admitting error than most of their critics.
Obama will do no wrong. Any and every failure of his will be blamed on Bush & Co. It must be fun going through life thinking that oneself or one’s fellow travelers are never wrong. Philosopher Eric Hoffer called people like that “true believers”. Hint, it wasn’t a compliment.
There’s nothing wrong with the idea of splitting out the real estate from the main company. The rent payments are an expense that reduce the tax liability, and it reduces Chrysler to what it should be, which is a car company, not a real estate operator.
Successful family owned businesses (like appliance chains, carpet stores, and other retail operations where real estate location is a key to success) have long separated real estate holdings from their companies. The families typically retain ownership or leases of the property and rent or sublet to the company. That provides rental income to them from the company as well as protecting the family from the result of business failure. When Highland Appliance and Fretter Appliance went out of business here in Michigan, the locations were valuable and were quickly rented out to Best Buy, Circuit City, etc.
Sometimes company creditors get nasty about family holdings. When the London and NYC commercial real estate markets collapsed in the 1990s, the Reichman family let Olympia & York go bankrupt and lost control of the Canary Wharf development rather than give their creditors a look at family finances. The banks recognized the ultimate potential of the project and used O&Y’s considerable debt to force the Reichmans out. While the family, once one of the world’s wealthiest, lost billions, by keeping family holdings separate from O&Y they were left a stake to grow upon. Since then, the family’s fortune has recovered a bit and with partners they retook control of Canary Wharf, only to lose a takeover battle with Morgan Stanley in ’04-’05. In ’06 Paul Reichman, who is now in his late 70s, started a $4 billion investment fund.
Disclaimer: I attend religious services at an institution that has received philanthropic contributions from the Reichmans. Unlike most billionaire families, they don’t live luxurious lives. I get the feeling that Paul Reichman isn’t driven by greed but rather that he makes money the same way that carpenters work with would.
If Cerberus is nasty and evil (and it is), it’s probably because of cutthroats such as Steve Feinberg who run the show, not because of half-wits such as Dan Quayle who are along for the ride.
I don’t think anyone is claiming that Dan Quayle is evil. Evil tends to be a systematic effect, and the source here is opacity of certain portions of the finance world.