Zell, Dealmaking Lyricist, Riffs to $900 Million Tune (Update1)
By Hui-yong Yu and Brian Louis
Feb. 8 (Bloomberg) -- Sam Zell, who yesterday sold his Equity Office Properties Trust to Blackstone Group LP for $39 billion in the biggest leveraged buyout ever, tipped his hand in a holiday e- mail featuring a parody of a Burt Bacharach song.
The message, titled ``The Theory of Relativity,'' shows a statue of a man holding up an umbrella as coins fall from the sky. To the tune of the 1969 hit ``Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head,'' the Web greeting says: ``Capital is raining on my head/Everything is liquid; we're awash with cash to spend.''
That includes Zell himself. New York-based Blackstone's purchase of the country's biggest office landlord will earn Equity Office's 65-year-old chairman and largest shareholder about $900 million. The deal closes Friday, and Zell will move on to another project.
``He's never going to slow down,'' says Richard Kincaid, chief executive officer of Equity Office, speaking after yesterday's shareholder meeting in Chicago. ``He's the ultimate deal guy.''
Zell didn't attend the meeting. He celebrated the deal Tuesday night over dinner in New York with a Blackstone executive, Kincaid says.
Record Sale Prices
Zell's decision to sell may be prescient. Commercial properties are selling at record highs, pushing yields down and potentially diminishing returns if the economy slows. Blackstone is buying Equity Office at an implied yield of about 5 percent, according to estimates by Merrill Lynch & Co., Equity Office's financial adviser.
``When you have those types of valuations there's just more risk and that was certainly a factor in why we decided to sell the company,'' Kincaid says.
Equity Office owns more than 500 buildings across the U.S.
The sale ends a takeover battle pitting Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman against Vornado Realty Trust CEO Steven Roth. Blackstone first proposed buying Equity in November but had to increase its offer twice to ward off Vornado, the biggest commercial landlord in Manhattan. The final price was 24 percent higher than the stock traded before the November offer.
The bidding war was fueled by the abundance of low-cost debt financing and multibillion-dollar inflows into private investment funds.
Zell extracted an all-cash offer that was almost 50 percent higher than Equity Office's average trading price last year.
``Sam Zell is one of the authentic geniuses of the real estate world,'' says Mortimer Zuckerman, chairman of Boston Properties.
Rents Up, Vacancies Down
The timing was right for Zell. Rents for prime U.S. downtown office space may climb an average of 15 percent this year after rising 18 percent last year, according to a Colliers International report released last month.
Vacancies at the end of last year were 13 percent, down from 14 percent a year earlier, the Boston-based commercial brokerage said in its quarterly market survey. Vacancies are now the lowest this decade.
Equity Office in recent years sold properties in slower- growing markets -- including Atlanta and Chicago -- and bought buildings in stronger markets such as New York.
In midtown Manhattan, the costliest U.S. office market, rents for prime space jumped 33 percent last year, Colliers says. Equity Office owns nine buildings in New York, including its largest: a 45-story tower at 1301 Avenue of the Americas near Rockefeller Center.
Blackstone already agreed to sell eight of Equity Office's midtown Manhattan buildings to Macklowe Properties Inc. for about $7 billion, people familiar with the transaction said yesterday.
Reputation Restored
The Blackstone deal caps a tumultuous few years for Zell, who took some knocks with his 2001 purchase of Spieker Properties, then the biggest commercial landlord on the U.S. West Coast.
He paid $7.2 billion just as California's technology boom fizzled and punctured Silicon Valley rents, causing Equity Office shares to lag other REITs -- such as New York-based SL Green Realty Corp. -- for the next four years. Equity Office cut its dividend in 2006.
``It restores his reputation to some extent,'' Lou Taylor, an analyst at Deutsche Bank Securities, says of the Blackstone deal.
Zell had been courted since 2005 by several potential buyers, including the California Public Employees' Retirement System, the largest U.S. pension fund. Vornado's Roth first approached Zell in July and renewed talks after the Blackstone offer in November.
Demand Increasing
Office properties likely will gain value because of corporate hiring and growing demand from pension funds to own income- producing assets to pay retiree benefits. Also, new construction takes years, putting a premium on existing space.
``There's no question office fundamentals are going to keep getting better for the next couple years,'' says James Corl, head of real estate investment at Cohen & Steers Inc., Equity Office's largest shareholder as of September.
Equity Office's roots go back to 1976, when Zell founded an integrated real estate management and acquisition company. The company went public in 1997 and grew from a portfolio of 32.2 million square feet to almost 110 million square feet in 16 states and Washington by November.
Zell says he won't be involved with the company after the purchase closes. He's the chairman of six other publicly traded companies, including Chicago-based Equity Residential, the largest U.S. apartment owner.
Yet he hasn't ruled out a return to the office market.
Zell also may be considering the media business. The Chicago Tribune reported yesterday that Zell approached Tribune Co. with a proposal that may include buying a stake.
``I'm a professional opportunist,'' he told Bloomberg News in November. ``If there were an opportunity in the office building business in the future, it is very likely that I would take advantage of it.''