Goldman Sachs Uses JOBS Act to Sidestep Volcker Rule
(Apr 2013)
Evan Weinberger at Law360 is reporting that Goldman Sachs may have found a way around the Volcker Rule--the ban on proprietary trading by banks, which also prohibits sponsoring hedge funds and private equity funds--by using another controversial regulatory measure, the 2012 JOBS Act (of which we have spoken before):
By setting up an independent business development company in which it will hold a minority stake and limited leverage exposures, Goldman will be able to engage in at least limited...
More Trouble for Inland American Real Estate Trust
(Mar 2013)
Inland American's March 2012 quarterly report revealed that the company was the subject of an ongoing SEC investigation (we wrote about this in our blog post titled "SEC Investigation into Largest Non-Traded REIT May Be A Sign of Things To Come"). Inland American's 2012 annual report further disclosed that several stockholders have sued the company seeking recovery of damages (View the SEC filing). According to the information in Inland American's SEC filings, both the SEC investigation and...
More on Non-Traded REIT IPOs-via-Mergers
(Feb 2013)
So far, two large non-traded REITs (Cole Credit Property Trust II and American Realty Capital Trust III) have merged with traded REITs. Merging with a traded REIT is one way for these otherwise largely illiquid investments to bring their assets to market and allow their investors to cash out. The more traditional 'exit strategy', and the strategy anticipated by most non-traded REIT offering documents, would be to have an independent initial public offering (IPO). So why are some non-traded...
Another Non-Traded REIT to be Absorbed into a Traded REIT
(Jan 2013)
Spirit Realty Capital, a large traded real estate investment trust (REIT), announced on Tuesday that it has acquired Cole Credit Property Trust II (CCPT II), a non-traded REIT. This is the second major merger between a traded and non-traded REIT; we covered the first last month. Like the previous deal, it appears that the non-traded REIT is the larger entity, but the resulting company will be market traded and assume the traded REIT's brand and ticker (SRC).
A major question for non-traded...
SLCG Research: Tenants-in-Common Interests
(Jan 2013)
While we've spent a great deal of time talking about non-traded REITs on this blog, so far we've given less attention to another kind of real estate investment that has also been sold to investors based on questionable merits: tenants-in-common (TIC) interests. TICs are private placement investments that were very popular during the real estate boom of 2002-2008, but have suffered tremendously when the markets turned sour. We discussed TICs in our paper on non-traded REITs, but we felt that...