In September, Manhattan real estate giant Harry Macklowe and his son William Macklowe—who together were looking for funds to meet a $6.4 billion debt payment—took investment banking star Joseph Perella with them to the Middle East in search of fresh capital. They were turned down.
While the Macklowes reportedly reached a deal with Deutsche Bank late last month to hand over control of the seven Manhattan office buildings they acquired less than a year ago for $7 billion and postpone the debt payment due this month while the buildings were sold, the road trip was an attempt at a novel source of financing.
The Macklowes had hired Perella’s boutique financial services firm, Perella Weinberg Partners LLP, to secure new long-term equity partners to assist in covering the exposure resulting from their aggressive acquisitions.
The trip to visit the Middle East’s “Big Four”—Kuwait, Qatar, Abu Dhabi and Dubai—was an attempt to go beyond that effort and capture debt financing.
Perella Weinberg, whose headquarters are in Macklowe’s GM Building, certainly has solid connections with Middle Eastern financial concerns eager to invest in Manhattan real estate. Perella Weinberg partner Tarek Abdel-Meguid is on the board of Kingdom Holdings, the Saudi conglomerate with extensive real estate holdings assembled by Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, who was instrumental in aiding last month’s $12.5 billion cash infusion for Citigroup.
Capital has lately been crossing the seas to America. Sovereign wealth funds and investment arms of governments—in both the Middle East and Far East—have been making significant real estate investments through U.S. institutions, said Scott Latham, executive director of Cushman & Wakefield’s New York Capital Markets Group, “because they have lots of equity, with limited investment opportunity, so increasingly they’re becoming equity partners in New York.” Sometimes the firms purchase outright. At other times, Latham said, they may put up as much as 25 to 40 percent equity.
Purchase transactions include deals done by Dubai-based investment firm Istithmar, a company led by CEO Joe Sita and said to be the investment arm of Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum, ruler of Dubai and prime minister and vice president of the United Arab Emirates. Istithmar has considerable Manhattan holdings, including hotels and office properties as well as the recently acquired Barney’s luxury retail chain. Istithmar is also an investor in Perella Weinberg.
In December, the Related Companies (the developer behind the Time Warner Center) reported equity and debt investments of $1.4 billion—and promises of investment in future Related projects—from a group including the investment arm of the Abu Dhabi government. The investments, which did not involve any control over the company, were intended to provide cash for Related to finance new residential and commercial developments as the domestic credit crunch continues.
Overall, however, said Latham, “it’s unrealistic to think Middle Eastern money is readily available for financing of U.S. real estate debt. If Middle Easterners wanted to play in that debt arena, they already would be there.”
Isam Salah, a New York- and Dubai-based partner in the Atlanta-based law firm King & Spalding, said some of the firm’s liquidity-rich Middle Eastern clients would be open to providing financing in specific situations—perhaps on a bridge basis for their own deals in Manhattan and throughout the U.S. But to date, he emphasized, only equity investments have been facilitated, with no lending of capital.
Salah pointed out that there hasn’t been that much lending coming into the U.S. from abroad at all, and that large-scale mortgage lending usually is done domestically, where there is control over the terms.
“It’s just a long shot,” he said, for the Macklowes or any Manhattan developers, “to contact firms or agencies—for multibillion-dollar deals—that haven’t done any financing in the U.S. It’s likely they’re not really geared up for debt investments, that they’re more comfortable putting on the equity investment hat than the financing hat.”
In Islamic law, finance and investment transactions conducted by Middle Eastern institutions and individuals must be Shari’ah-compliant, referring to a strict code of Muslim conduct in business. Interest-bearing lending is considered abusive and not socially responsible, with the belief that all participants should share in the risk and share in the reward. Thus the use of credit and interest are taboo in Shari’ah-compliant transactions, and entities operating under Islamic law cannot borrow or lend money, at least not via traditional terms.
Over four or five years, Salah said, “there has been significant growth in Shari’ah-compliant transactions. Many of these use Islamic fixed-income securities called sukuk, which are instruments of debt transactions but are not interest-bearing. They’re tradable.”
PricewaterhouseCoopers estimates that the amount of Shari’ah-compliant capital investments worldwide—among more than 70 countries—is $500 to $800 billion, with annual double-digit growth anticipated over the next 10 years or more.
The core idea with Shari’ah, said Salah, is that “you can’t operate on a profit basis; you can’t make money from money.
A business partnership, rather than quick financing or providing money, is more socially responsible.”
Among other acceptable alternative structures, Salah said, are leasing arrangements with third-party financing that end in a purchase, with lease payments made against the assets, rather than interest payments, and also selling on a deferred-payment basis. “The volume and size of sukuk transactions has grown,” he said, “and now Middle Eastern groups are looking to expand them into the U.S.”
Professor Daryl Koehn, who holds the Cullen Chair in Business Ethics at the University of St. Thomas in Houston, had several cautions beyond U.S. regulatory concerns, regarding ethics in the potential for Middle Eastern monies being used in U.S. debt financing.
She pointed out that there is strong post-Sept. 11 sensitivity to things Middle Eastern: this country operates under the realities of being at war in the Middle East, paying high prices for oil while that same money is plowed back into investments here. In addition, U.S. entities are accepting cash from sovereign wealth funds controlled by foreign governments with political interests as well as financial interests.
At the same time, said Koehn, author of several books including “Local Insights, Global Ethics For Business,” people shouldn’t over-dramatize concern over Middle Eastern money being put to use in the U.S., the way Japanese investments in this country were scrutinized in the ’80s. It’s a global economy now, she said. “As long as oil prices are high, there’s going to be a huge amount of money from the Middle East looking for someplace safe to park. And oil prices are high for a variety of reasons, not just some Middle Eastern dictate. If we weren’t in thrall to Arab countries, we would be in thrall elsewhere.”
“The obvious caveat,” she continued, “is that some concern has to be paid to the industry into which funding goes. Some, such as Boeing and their competitors, and the defense industry, are more sensitive than others. Also, who has voting rights? If the partner doesn’t have a vote, nor is on the board, the influence is mitigated.” Such is the case with the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority’s injection of $7.5 billion into Citigroup in November, in trade for a 4.9 percent stake in the company but no leadership influence.
“We have to be sure we don’t become moral hypocrites,” Koehn said.