Sternlicht, Barry S

Subterms

    Latest story

    113 Shares149 Views

    Starwood REIT, Facing a Possible Cash Crunch, Limits Withdrawals

    by

    Starwood Real Estate Income Trust is restricting what investors can redeem rather than sell its properties to raise cash.A giant real estate fund managed by the company of the billionaire investor Barry Sternlicht is limiting the amount of money that investors can redeem, in an attempt to fend off a potential cash crunch as high interest rates pummel the market for commercial properties like office buildings.Starwood Real Estate Income Trust, which manages about $10 billion and is one of the largest real estate investment trusts around, said on Thursday that it would buy back only 1 percent of the value of the fund’s assets every quarter, down from 5 percent earlier.Starwood said that it had chosen to tighten the limit because it was facing more withdrawals than it could meet with its cash on hand, and that it was a better option than raising money by selling properties at discounted prices. The value of commercial properties has fallen — hit both by lower occupancy since the coronavirus pandemic and by high interest rates that make real estate less affordable.In a letter to shareholders, Mr. Sternlicht, who leads the Starwood Capital Group, and Sean Harris, the chief executive of Starwood’s REIT, said: “We cannot recommend being an aggressive seller of real estate assets today given what we believe to be a near-bottom market with limited transaction volumes, and our belief that the real estate markets will improve.”Any such gates tend to spook investors.“This will have a negative effect on fund-raising,” said Kevin Gannon, chief executive of the investment bank Robert A. Stanger & Company, which follows the REIT market. “I think it will give people more pause.” He added that “no one anticipated that redemptions would stay this big this long.”Real estate investment trusts buy and own commercial or industrial properties and generate dividends for investors. They are typically publicly traded entities. But the Starwood REIT and one created by the private equity behemoth Blackstone are privately held and instead sold by financial advisers, mostly to individual investors. Some churn is normal in the business, as investors make decisions about what to buy and sell.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    More stories

    • 113 Shares129 Views

      in Elections

      Billionaire Donor Barry Sternlicht Assails Brown’s Deal With Protesters

      by

      One of Brown University’s major donors, the billionaire real estate mogul Barry Sternlicht, on Friday sharply criticized the school’s agreement to hold a board vote on cutting investments tied to Israel, calling it “unconscionable” and saying he had “paused” donations to the school.Brown is among a small number of universities that have agreed to discuss their investments in companies that do business in Israel, in order to persuade student protesters to dismantle encampments. Mr. Sternlicht, in a scathing email to The New York Times, which he copied to Brown’s president, Christina H. Paxson, said the arrangement amounted to sympathy for Hamas, which attacked Israel in October, and described students protesting Israel’s actions in Gaza as “ignorant.”“There should never be a vote when people do not have the facts,” he wrote. “It’s not education, it’s propaganda.”Mr. Sternlicht, 63, said no deal with protesters could be fruitful because the two sides did not agree on “facts and moral clarity,” as well as the scale of Israel’s invasion of Gaza after Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack, in which about 1,200 were killed and another 250 were taken hostage. Israel’s subsequent intense bombardment of the tightly packed area has left more than 34,000 dead and drawn international condemnation.He cited the hundreds of thousands of civilians killed in wars in Ukraine, Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq, asking: “Where were the protests?”“As far as wars go, Israel has been quite muted,” Mr. Sternlicht wrote.The blowback from Mr. Sternlicht, who has described himself as a political independent and whose name is on a Brown residence hall, shows how quickly the issue of divestment from Israel may vex universities. Until a week ago, even discussing the subject was widely considered a nonstarter, as it was sure to divide a large swath of students and faculty from many of the businesspeople whose donations fill university endowments.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More